- Video
-
Club Roar
Captured a great grassroots sporting moment? We want to see it!Content Collections
The Roar Community
- Join
- Login
Much has been written on Test cricketers who have excelled with bat and ball. Let me train my binoculars on wicket-keepers who won Test matches using their bats and gloves.
To me, expertise with bat and gloves also constitutes all-round excellence.
If Australia lacks a genuine batsman-bowler all-rounder at Test level since the retirements of Richie Benaud and Alan Davidson in early 1960s, Rod Marsh, Ian Healy and Adam Gilchrist helped Australia in reaching the top rung of cricket with their aggressive batting and acrobatic work behind the stumps.
They were, to some extent, as much two-triggered match-winners as Keith Miller, Gary Sobers, Ian Botham, Imran Khan, Richard Hadlee and Kapil Dev were for their countries.
A wicket-keeper is like a pianist in an orchestra: there is room for only one.
To be included, one has to be the best. The gloved all-rounders, from Les Ames, Godfrey Evans, Marsh and Alan Knott to the more recent quartet of Healy, Gilchrist, South African Mark Boucher and India’s MS Dhoni, are featured in a two-part series.
Les Ames (England).
A cheerful and bubbly character, he was strongly built and equally at ease ’keeping to the thunderbolts of Harold Larwood, the fastish swing of Bill Voce or the spin wizardry of ‘Tich’ Freeman.
Also, he kept scoreboard operators busy with his entertaining batting as he was the first world-class wicket-keeper batsman.
He was good enough to play for England as a batsman alone. No other wicket-keeper has scored 100 first-class centuries (102, including nine double hundreds).
In 593 first-class matches, he amassed 37,248 runs at 43.51, including 2434 runs (with eight centuries) at 40.56 in 47 Tests.
He also made 1121 dismissals (703 caught and 418 stumped) in first-class matches including 97 (74 caught and 23 stumped) in Tests. His total of 418 stumpings at first-class level remains a record after seven decades.
Godfrey Evans (England) and Farokh Engineer (India).
Exuberant, ebullient and extrovert are the terms which describe two wicket-keeper batsmen, born thousands of kilometers and 18 years apart. They are the Es of cricket; Evans of Kent and England and Engineer of Bombay, India and Lancashire.
Both were dare-devilishly outstanding wicket-keeper-batsmen of their day.
They dived full-length to collect balls on either side, making difficult catches look easy and at times easy catches look spectacular! They loved entertaining the crowd and were hungry for applause.
Both scored over 2000 runs in Tests, Evans 2439 at 20.49 in 91 Tests, Engineer 2611 at 31.08 in 46.
They hit two Test tons each and both narrowly missed out on scoring a century before lunch, Evans against India at Lord’s in June 1952, Engineer against the West Indies at Madras in January 1967. The swashbucklers made nonsense of the theory that wicket-keepers should not be showy.
Rodney Marsh (Australia).
He started his Test career under a cloud, but ended it 14 years later, among the stars.
Selected in the Australian team in the Ashes series of 1970-71 to replace the popular Brian Taber, he dropped a few catches in his Test debut in Brisbane and was nicknamed ‘Iron Gloves’.
The following month in the Sydney Test, he was booed by a section of the pro-Taber crowd.
But the tough, moustachioed Marsh did not let this negative crowd reaction upset him. If any, it increased his determination to succeed.
In his Test swansong against Pakistan in Sydney in January 1984, he was cheered lustily by the crowd as he took five catches in his final innings and became the first wicket-keeper to make 350 Test dismissals.
It was the Test where the three icons of Australian cricket – Greg Chappell, Dennis Lillee and Marsh – bid farewell to Test cricket simultaneously.
With fellow West Australian Lillee, Marsh had formed a fabulous partnership; 95 of Lillee’s 355 wickets were caught by Marsh.
It remains a record three decades later and the term “caught Marsh bowled Lillee” has become a folklore.
Caught Marsh bowled Lillee is also the title of Ian Brayshaw’s biography of the Aussie legends. In the Foreword, captain Ian Chappell emphasised the role the Lillee-Marsh combination played in Australia’s success in 1970s and ’80s.
“As players they were a captain’s dream. At one end, a talented fast bowler who, with huge heart, was always ready to give just one last effort for his team. At the other end, a man whose skill with the gloves could lift a team with a brilliant catch or who could offer some tactical advice that might turn a game in the team’s favour.”
Alan Knott (England).
All eyes were on Alan Philip Eric Knott when he is on the field, whether wicket-keeping or batting. His fidgeting, twisting and calisthenics made compulsive viewing.
As a wicket-keeper, he surpassed all records for an Englishman during his fourteen hectic years between 1967 and 1981.
Small, nimble-footed and quick-witted, he was an impish genius, as suggested by his initials APE!
He was prone to stiff muscles and therefore exercised constantly to keep his limbs supple. His pads had to have four straps instead of three. He changed his clothes and showered at each interval and existed mostly on a diet of fruit and milk.
He was preferred to his wicket-keeping rivals, especially Bob Taylor, because of his superior batting. Knott batted in two gears; slow and defensive when England was in trouble but once the runs were on the board he switched to top gear, pressing down the accelerator paddle to the full.
According to Christopher Martin-Jenkins, “His right-handed batting was shrewd, increasingly unorthodox (his top hand holding the bat with the palm facing the bowler) and often outrageous, as when he repulsed the dangerous swing bowling of Bob Massie by carting him to all parts of the leg-side field in 1972.”
Ian Healy, Adam Gilchrist, Adam Boucher and Mahendra Singh Dhoni will be featured in Part II next week.