Famine to Feast: The Australian wicket-keeper revolution

ByAnirudh Suresh, SportsCafe Editor

01/24/2020

Everyone loves a rags-to-riches story. It has that Cinderella touch to it; It hits you hard emotionally, captures your heart and often, the sheer improbability and unlikelihood attached to the events reduce you to tears. It is also often what hogs the limelight. But what about the other side?

No one ever talks about how it feels to be a Prince one day and a pauper the next. And truth be spoken, people do not like talking about it either. There is also always that ‘brat’ element attached to it. And for this very reason, these stories are dismissed and they go unheard. It must be tough, though. One day you are lying inside the glorious master bedroom suite of a beautifully renovated house with three balconies, two driveways, a detached garage for your car, and the next? There you are in the streets, in a tent, without a home or a job, struggling to survive, reflecting back on the glorious times. It is miserable and distressing and anything but a fairytale.

Try asking the Australian team to narrate their story and you might be surprised to see it follow an eerily similar trend, at least when it comes to the wicket-keepers. One day, at some point during the late 90s and early 2000s, there they were in their luxurious villa with Adam Gilchrist, Ian Healy, Brad Haddin, Ryan Campbell and Graham Manou, all sitting comfortably on the couch.

Moments later, poof, everything was gone. All that was left was emptiness and there they were, lying on the streets, staring at the void, thinking of the good times they had when they were spoilt for choices when it came to picking wicket-keepers. In a decade’s time, from being a child that was spoilt for choices, not knowing what candy to pick from the box of candies that his friend just unveiled, they were reduced to a homeless man that was willing to scamper and take almost anything and everything thrown at him.

It came to a scenario where they had to ask Brad Haddin, who at that point in time was 38 years of age, to keep wickets for them in the 2015 World Cup. But the lowest point perhaps came in 2016, almost 8 years after they’d seen the last of the ever-so-glorious Adam Gilchrist. With Matthew Wade’s glovework susceptible and with him struggling with the bat anyway, with Haddin retired and with Ben Dunk turning out to be all but a one-season wonder, the selectors resorted to picking Peter Nevill for the T20 World Cup in India.

Yes, the Peter Nevill whose strike rate was barely beyond the run-a-ball mark, the Peter Nevill who was a Test specialist, represented Australia in a World T20. It does beggar belief when you think about it, for at that point in time, it felt like the entire wicket-keeper race in the country was wiped away and was on the verge of extinction.

Very rarely in these prince-to-pauper stories do you see redemption; More often than not, it is always one downfall after another with the person reaching the nethermost depths of their life before dissolving into thin air, not being able to recover, as a result of which they’re not heard of ever again. But saying that, if you’re lucky enough, perhaps one in a million, life throws at you second chances. And right now, three years after staring at rock bottom, Australia have been thrown a lifeline. Calling it a lifeline would perhaps be an understatement. They have, in all fairness, been handed a whole new life.

Three years after the entire race was all but wiped out, there is, currently, a wicket-keeper invasion, a revolution of sorts, going on in the country. In Josh Philippe, Josh Inglis, Sam Harper and Ben McDermott, Australia have four young men, young wicket-keepers, who not only provide hope for the future but have the ability to potentially bury the ghosts of the past. And this is excluding the incumbent Alex Carey, who has already drawn comparisons to the great Michael Bevan.

It can be argued that not since the days of the Gilchrists and Haddins and Manous and Healys has the country had such a rich vein of talented cricketers capable of donning the gloves. The Wades and the Paines and the Nevilles did pop up every now and then, but they did come with their own frailties and shortcomings. Wade, for that matter, was never a great wicket-keeper; Tim Paine was an excellent glovesman but never could hit the heights with the bat and Neville, of course, is the closest Australia have come to fielding an out and out specialist wicket-keeper.

This might still be early days, but a quick glance at the BBL this season should give you a good idea of the quartet’s excellence in duality: Between the four of them, Phillipe, Inglis, McDermott and Harper have scored a staggering 1,254 runs and inflicted a total of 37 dismissals. It is very much possible that the numbers could be deceptive, but none of them has put a foot wrong so far - neither with the bat nor with the glove. What makes it more impressive, however, is that all four of them are under the age of 26 - with both Harper and Philippe in their early 20s - meaning they could very well stretch into the next decade, should things fall into place.

Individual abilities aside, the versatility the quartet brings to the table, too, would keep the management interested. Inglis and Philippe, for example, bat at the top of the order and while the former is an out-and-out hitter in the Baz mould, the latter likes to start off quickly before slowing down to build his innings; Harper is a dasher - almost with a Steve Smith-esque approach to his batting - who can bat anywhere from 1 to 7, while McDermott is a solid middle-order batsman who is also now eyeing the finisher’s role. What this means is that more than one of them, say like an England, can seamlessly fit into and co-exist in the same team owing to the fact that, gloves aside, they are able batsmen who can slot into teams sheerly due to their ability to wield the willow to good effect.

But what’s perhaps more encouraging for Australia is that it’s not just these four who have made inroads on the circuit. There’s 20-year-old Matthew Gikes who struck a fabulous half-century on debut and has featured in every game for the Thunder and has been an integral part of their side. There’s the Stars’ Seb Gotch who has made a name for himself as one of the best glovesmen going around in the country and then there’s South Australia’s Harry Nielsen who’s started off the Shield season with two exceptional fifties.

The country, at this point of time, has seen more talent emerge on the wicket-keeping front than it has in the 20 years. It is fair to say that for Australia, it’s gone from famine to feast but it’s now up to the management to groom and nurture the ‘Batch of ‘20’ with care. Players would need to be given ample opportunities - to succeed and fail - and tough decisions would have to be taken.

This might also mean the introduction of the mid-season transfer of players at the state level, for it cannot be that players with ability are allowed to warm the bench. Take the classic example of Josh Philippe and Josh Inglish - The latter did not feature in a single Marsh Cup game all season owing to Philippe taking the gloves and the other ‘stars’ shunning down the spots. This cannot happen.

It might be 15 long years since Australia last lived in a luxurious villa, but perhaps, in the future, there is hope that after all, they might very well become a prince again someday. For now, though, at least they’re no more a pauper.

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Famine to Feast: The Australian wicket-keeper revolution

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