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If the wicketkeeper is the heartbeat of a cricket team, then England need a cardiologist.
Matt Prior, who was regarded as the world’s best keeper-batsmen at the start of England’s summer, was donned England’s Cricketer of the Year as the northern Ashes begun.
But since then, he has had one of the most torrid cricketing years since Geraint Jones in the 2006/2007 Ashes series, and it’s costing his team badly.
His dismissal on the third day in Perth was the shot of a man who does not know his cricket. Sure, he was batting with the tail, but this England tail has helped Prior to seven exciting Test centuries in his illustrious career.
Still trailing by plenty, Prior flung hideously outside off stump to Peter Siddle’s deliver outside off stump. The fine edge was snaffled easily by his opposite number.
To compound Prior’s misery, his day behind the stumps was considerably worse than his performance in front of them as he let through eight byes, missed two stumpings off the batting of David Warner, and didn’t get anywhere near a Chris Rogers edge that flew between him and Alastair Cook.
He also dropped a tough chance off the bowling of Graeme Swann.
The first missed stumping occurred when Warner was on 12, and was one of the simpler offering that he would have received with the gloves in his career. Warner finished the day with 112.
Now it must be said that no one is perfect, and even the best are allowed a bad day at the office, but Prior’s bad day has turned into an epic with no end in sight. Since the start of the northern Ashes, prior has averaged a deplorable 17.83 in Tests.
This is not an acceptable return in the age of batsman first, keeper second.
Many an English fan could have been forgiven for thinking the worst was behind him after he scored 69 in Adelaide last week, but the context of that innings was that Prior was batting on one of the world’s flattest wickets, and in a situation where he had absolutely no chance of saving the game.
Essentially, he was batting for nothing.
When it has counted, Prior has failed. He failed in Brisbane in the middle of two batting collapses, he failed in Adelaide at the wrath of Mitchell Johnson, and he failed in Perth because he was trying to pull a ball that should have raced to point.
It’s unfortunate for Prior that his failures have coincided with him team on the brink of losing the Ashes, in much the same way that Shane Watson’s inept statistics are being, for the most part, overlooked.
But that’s why the keeper is considered the lifeblood of a cricket team, because as his stocks rise and fall, so do his team’s.
It would be lax, however, to suggest that Prior is the reason that England are losing this series. James Anderson, Kevin Pietersen, Alastair Cook and Graeme Swann are all equally responsible. But it’s been the ease with which Prior’s feathers have been ruffled that is the cause for the greatest concern.
England need to make changes for the Boxing Day Test, and with Jonny Bairstow scoring a century for the English Performance Programme last week, Prior is most definitely in the firing line.
There is still a chance that Prior could prove me wrong, and if he can guide his side to a miraculous draw over the next two days then he deserves to see out the series. But if he doesn’t, and he probably won’t, then Bairstow should be given a chance come Boxing Day.
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