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What shoul SA do when their ENG exports come running back to SA?

jboss

Banned
I just realised the Kiswatter(spelling) may not have an opportunity after all to play for ENG one day. Using him as an example should SA welcome him back when he realises that Prior has many years left as wicketkeeper? He has alreasy epressed no intrest in playing for SA and I feel that may come back to haunt him.:laugh:
 

four_or_six

Cricketer Of The Year
I just realised the Kiswatter(spelling) may not have an opportunity after all to play for ENG one day. Using him as an example should SA welcome him back when he realises that Prior has many years left as wicketkeeper? He has alreasy epressed no intrest in playing for SA and I feel that may come back to haunt him.:laugh:
?
 

jboss

Banned
You did not read. I asked when his decision comes back to haunt him. I bet he will not be able to play as wicket keeper for England as Prior is probably going to have the job for a while. I am sure he will regret the decision one day.
 

four_or_six

Cricketer Of The Year
You did not read. I asked when his decision comes back to haunt him. I bet he will not be able to play as wicket keeper for England as Prior is probably going to have the job for a while. I am sure he will regret the decision one day.
It's a shame for South African cricket in the future if he's got no hope of playing for England and yet he'd be such a shoe-in for South Africa that he'd regret not playing there.

Anyway, he's got ties over here. He's got a British parent and he went to school here for some time, I don't see why he shouldn't choose to play for England if he wants to.
 

Richard

Cricket Web Staff Member
Anyone confident that Prior is going to be keeping wicket for England for a long time would do well to watch more than just last summer. He was acceptable then, which was a damn relief, but it was a good start and no more. Before then he'd been diabolical and it is far from inconceivable that he will be so again in future.
 

Furball

Evil Scotsman
I just realised the Kiswatter(spelling) may not have an opportunity after all to play for ENG one day. Using him as an example should SA welcome him back when he realises that Prior has many years left as wicketkeeper? He has alreasy epressed no intrest in playing for SA and I feel that may come back to haunt him.:laugh:
Jeez, there's a couple of South Africans of British descent/parentage playing for England, get over it.
 

Richard

Cricket Web Staff Member
He wasn't diabolical last winter
I can only presume you missed the Fourth Test (was officially the Fifth) in West Indies - well OK that wasn't the winter it was the spring, but it was the UK off-season, which is what is generally referred to in-whole. Prior's performance there was as bad as you're ever going to see from a Test wicketkeeper, and yes he'd been perfectly decent in the first 4 matches of the off-season but that's precisely the problem there's always been with him - he has 2-5 perfectly decent matches then 1 utter, rank shocker. It happened in 2007, it happened in 2007/08 and it happened in 2008/09. And the shocker is generally so bad that the 4-5 OK games can't excuse it. You cannot have a Test wicketkeeper who is so bad with such regularity, even if he's OK when he's not said so bad.
 
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zaremba

Cricketer Of The Year
I just realised the Kiswatter(spelling) may not have an opportunity after all to play for ENG one day. Using him as an example should SA welcome him back when he realises that Prior has many years left as wicketkeeper? He has alreasy epressed no intrest in playing for SA and I feel that may come back to haunt him.:laugh:
I expect he'll be treated in much the same way as Ryan McLaren. Ie if he's good enough, he'll get into the SA team.
 

zaremba

Cricketer Of The Year
I can only presume you missed the Fourth Test (was officially the Fifth) in West Indies - well OK that wasn't the winter it was the spring, but it was the UK off-season, which is what is generally referred to in-whole. Prior's performance there was as bad as you're ever going to see from a Test wicketkeeper, and yes he'd been perfectly decent in the first 4 matches of the off-season but that's precisely the problem there's always been with him - he has 2-5 perfectly decent matches then 1 utter, rank shocker. It happened in 2007, it happened in 2007/08 and it happened in 2008/09. And the shocker is generally so bad that the 4-5 OK games can't excuse it. You cannot have a Test wicketkeeper who is so bad with such regularity, even if he's OK when he's not said so bad.
Yeah he was dreadful in the summer as well. All those dropped catches cost us the Ashes.
 

Richard

Cricket Web Staff Member
Not entirely sure why you needed to post that TBH as I'd already said as much in my previous post. :unsure:
 

BoyBrumby

Englishman
I expect he'll be treated in much the same way as Ryan McLaren. Ie if he's good enough, he'll get into the SA team.
Quite so. One of three ex-Kolpaks (Langeveldt & Harris the others) who currently paly for SA. The county championship is clearly a finishing school for South Africa.
 

zaremba

Cricketer Of The Year
I know, I know.

It doesn't detract from the point, however. The guy has improved as a keeper, kept really well (and not just in the sense that he held his catches) throughout the Ashes, and deserves credit for that. He's had 2 or 3 bad Tests in his career and gets disproportionately slated for them. And next time he has a bad game (imagine! a cricketer having a bad game!) he will duly be subjected to ridiculously OTT criticism yet again, including in particular on CW.
 
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GIMH

Norwood's on Fire
Yeah, look, he had the odd bad game in the winter but seriously, he was decent over the winter. It's not like all of a sudden he learnt to catch this summer.
 

Richard

Cricket Web Staff Member
Last summer was the first time he'd had an extended spell without a shocking game. I myself have said many times that I am not prepared to believe a player has improved on the basis of a single season's work, they must demonstrate good-quality performance for longer than that, more so than ever having been truly awful beforehand.

And yes, Prior 2007-2008/09 was indeed truly awful. It is quite true that in 10 of his 13 Tests (yes I know officially it's 14 but given that 1 of these lasted 14 deliveries, none in which he participated, I'm sure you'll agree it's irrelevant) he'd done not-that-much wrong, but in the other 3 he was as I say so dreadful as to beggar belief - honestly as bad as I've ever seen any wicketkeeper be in any Test. It is not at all acceptable to be that bad that reguarly as a Test wicketkeeper - games that bad are the sort that a competent wicketkeeper might expect to have once in 40 or so, and an excellent one basically never.

Prior will have to keep-up his form from the 2009 summer for a little longer yet for me to be convinced he's a long-term option. If he is, great, because I've few doubts remaining over his batting - he's excellent against moderate seam, excellent against spin and seems competent enough against good-quality seam. But I think anyone claiming he was anything other than very poor indeed as a wicketkeeper in his Test career prior to the 2009 summer is kidding themselves.
 

GIMH

Norwood's on Fire
I think he when he was bad, he was very bad. That doesn't mean he was always bad and it certainly doesn't mean he was bad overall. IMO.
 

Richard

Cricket Web Staff Member
As I say - I think if 13 Tests in which someone is decent enough in 10 and abysmal in 3 counts as "decent overall" to you you're easily satisfied. I am not remotely happy with such a thing and would term it "very poor overall". As a wicketkeeper you are expected to get it right the vast majority of the time, and all decent wicketkeepers do. It's not like batsmen and bowlers who cannot remotely hope to do such a thing.
 

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