Stick with next Aussie keeper: Gilchrist

Maybe I haven't watched enough of de Kock, but I've seen him take plenty of tough chances comfortably. Maybe "brilliant" is a step too far, but he's still very good. Besides, what you've done is list a bunch of good keepers who happen to be very good batsmen. As far as I'm aware, none of those blokes could be listed as "mediocre" with the gloves, apart from Buttler, who isn't in the England test team anymore, so bad example there. If everyone thinks the best way is to pick batting over keeping, that indicates nothing other than a popular mindset. Doesn't mean it's correct, or the best way to go, simply means that's the popular direction. I mean, it was unfortunate when Haddin dropped Root in the first Ashes test that he scored a century in and we lost, but hey, he could score a few runs sometimes, so that's better? Keeping really is underappreciated. Regarding greats, Healy, Slater and Gilchrist have all come out and said Nevill should be the first pick for the Ashes. Care to comment on that? Seems some blokes actually do prioritise keeping. Nice job referencing Hartley, he was the best gloveman in Australia and also averaged 34.5 with the bat. Sounds like we could've done with someone like that for the past few series, hey? Don't care what you do with your grammar, but don't go making any form of attack if there's anything wrong with your presentation.

Exactly Ronan.That is the way every team picks their keeper nowadays.Dhoni,Buttler,Sarfaraz,Mushfiqur,Chandimal all were picked bacause of their superior batting prowess over their counterparts.Sure,some of them are good keepers but when they were first selected,it was their batting which helped them to get the nod.If Ian Healy played in this era,he wouldn't have played much cricket for Australia;I can guarantee you that.Look at Chris Hartley if you don't believe me.

De Kock absolutely is not a "brilliant" keeper, he is an adequate gloveman, at best. But combined with his brilliant batting that makes him one of the world's most valuable cricketers.

@Matthew,you are saying that De cock is a brilliant keeper?Then you probably have't seen enough of him.He drops simple chances on a regular basis.Dan villas,Morne Vanwyk are much better keepers than him.And your idea of any runs scored by the keeper is a bonus doesn't work anymore. Selectors,most fans don't see it that way.And that is the exact reason many former cricketers like the great Alan Border was suggesting to drop Wade for Handscomb in Bangladesh.Same reason why Neville was dropped.And coming to my presentation and terrible grammar issue;i am not here to showcase my presentation skill.I am here to give my opinion regarding the game we love.my grammar is probably not as good as yours,but i reckon it's easy to understand and all the words are correctly spelled.Cheers mate.

Mate, that's complete rubbish. The wicketkeeper is in the team to keep. Any runs he scores are a bonus. Would you advocate for dropping Hazlewood for, say, Siddle because he's a better bat? No, you wouldn't, because Hazlewood is a better bowler, aka his primary attribute. Keeper is the same. If de Kock is not the best keeper in his country, then please let me know who this secret unbelievably talented keeper is, because de Kock is a brilliant keeper. And Bairstow is not the only keeper in the Ashes squad either. Good thing we have experts like you to tell us that "it doesn't matter how good you are with the gloves". If you're going to open your arguments with ad hominens, I'd recommend you make sure your arguments and their presentation are flawless. Your "stone age" comment might've been funny if it wasn't delivered with terrible grammar.

@matthew,you are living in stone age then.keeper has to score runs in modern cricket.It doesn't matter how good you are with the gloves,you need to score runs.Decock,Bairstow are not the best keeper of their respective countries.Yet they are the first choice.

I keep going back to statcast because I think that is the future we should be heading towards. Statcast measures, reaction time of the fielder, speed of the fielder and the ball, distance the fielder covers and the route they take. All that combine to give the catch a rating, 1-5 stars. One of the challenges to bring that into cricket would be indeed deciding if a keeper going for a diving catch in front of 1st slip is an error for robbing first slip or a missed 4 star chance. Errors in baseball are still decided on by the official scorers so they are not using digital measurements to make that judgement as far as my limited knowledge goes. I guess in their current system it would be a grade 3 error. As for cricketers dropping a five star chance by statcast, I would think it would be recorded as such, along along with all the other above measure data so you can get a great idea over time about how good a fielder really is.

It's good to be moving to something that can actually show real statistical figures rather than just feelings about things. But there are still issues with it. For instance, if you have an edge and one keeper dives and drops it and the other doesn't even go for it, does it go as an error for the one who dropped it but not the one who failed to even go for it? As far as "the fact they used Carey for comparison" meaning anything, a lot of it comes down to there really being few options. With Whiteman out, Bancroft is likely going to be keeping for WA, but as he hasn't been keeping in F/C cricket recently, he's less likely to get included and Qld and Vic basically have rookies this year. So 3 of the 6 state keepers are basically ruled out, just leaving those three. So while it may be possible for Bancroft, Pierson, Harper or Handscomb to do brilliantly with bat and gloves in the first 3 shield games and suddenly put themselves in contention for selection in the Ashes as Australia's keeper, they would all be considered long shots, and that really just leaves Wade, Nevill and Carey.

Three very important knocks that came in very trying circumstances, which showed the level he's capable of performing at. But, like I've said multiple times, the batting should be secondary to the keeping, the 6 blokes above him should be getting the runs, that's the job they're there to do.

Get on youtube if you have time and look at how statcast judges catches.

Just checked it out, that's a lot of stats. Yeah, bring something like that in ASAP, that's pretty comprehensive.

I'll take it a step further, Hartley should've been in instead of Haddin. That is just my Queensland bias though. Never actually saw much of Ludeman outside of the Big Bash. Hopefully Carey has a brilliant Shield season and can put it out of contention, for mine he's just a little off what's required.

Hartley should've been in when Nevill got a go I reckon. I also rated Ludeman, but Carey is clearly a more consistent and more reliable bat than Ludes ever was. Even with his small sample size of innings.

Three knocks in 17 tests is what you're basing your argument on? Come on. Might as well pick Carey to average 20 rather than the 32 year old

I'm happy for them to pick Carey if fans can put up with our keeper continuing to average 20.

Check out statcast in MLB and you can see what is possible now.

I agree, don't get me wrong, but it should still be up for debate a bit, I think it should depend on whether he was failing when he *should* have been getting runs, or couldn't just produce enough cameos. I think if we hadn't have failed so badly against SL and SA it'd be seen as acceptable to carry that batting. With the age thing, it should still be enough to get a good 7-8 years out of him. I think aiming for these mega long-term players is applied a bit too generously, it should really be restricted to super-talents who indisputably need to be in the side ASAP. I don't think Carey's at the level where he's going to be that kind of player, and if he's not at his absolute best until in a couple of years time, I think that's better. Hopefully Whiteman picks up where he left off, he's the next closest for mine. Peirson for cheeky bolter. Personally, I think that no-one's "standing out" as a keeper because we're giving them the same treatment we gave the spinners for years - we want the next Gilchrist and we want him now, just like we wanted the next Warne. It's why we focus so much on how good a batsman our keepers are. Then take someone like Chris Hartley - who, in my opinion, was the best domestic keeper in the country. Nothing flashy, but still a good bat and has the most dismissals in Shield cricket. Someone like that is a more realistic prospect for mine.

Carey's batting only has to compete with Nevill's and Wade's test averages which are sub-30. His keeping highlight reel from last shield season should be enough to get people excited in my opinion.

You're right about the conversion rate. Also a problem when judging performance is that how the proportions could change over time, despite little actual variance in the dismissals/error rate ratio. Seems pretty messy, but hopefully it's the spark that's needed to produce something that works really well.

Total dismissals are never a good way to judge a keeper. Conversion rate is a better way to view it, but then you do need a rating system to judge it. The quicker we get statcast the better. I guess statcast would need a tweak to see if can handle keeping up to the stumps.