Based on purely WK skills - Boucher Or Gilchrist?

[morgieb]

Gilchrist. Think he gets undersold as a keeper due to how good of a batsman he was, and he did handle Warne fine. Boucher didn't really have a great comparision. It's close though, find both good rather than great keepers as someone else said.,

 

[vcs]

Gilchrist took a large number of spectacular diving catches off quicks, and I can't ever remember him dropping a catch or missing a stumping. Though it could be that the Aussies created enough opportunities that the misses don't stick in the mind.

 

[Victor Ian]

Gilchrist took a large number of spectacular diving catches off quicks, and I can't ever remember him dropping a catch or missing a stumping. Though it could be that the Aussies created enough opportunities that the misses don't stick in the mind.

That might be a reason why Boucher is better. Perhaps he didn't five as much because he was already in the right spot. Still - results count now both are retired.

 

[akilana]

Gilchrist took a large number of spectacular diving catches off quicks, and I can't ever remember him dropping a catch or missing a stumping. Though it could be that the Aussies created enough opportunities that the misses don't stick in the mind.

Probably didn't watch the ashes 2005?

 

[Shri]

Gilchrist took a large number of spectacular diving catches off quicks, and I can't ever remember him dropping a catch or missing a stumping. Though it could be that the Aussies created enough opportunities that the misses don't stick in the mind.

 

[Bijed]

Probably didn't watch the ashes 2005?

That wasn't his greatest series, but it's easy to forget that Gilchrist made a few mistakes when the other wicketkeeper on display that series was Geraint Jones.

 

[Zinzan]

Having a look at their fielding summaries, I can not see how one can rate Boucher better, except if they put a lot of weight in length of career - however this is unfair to gilly as he had to wait a long time for Healy to move out of the way.

Gilly has more dismissals per innings, a much more consistant year to year, and in all places performance. In fact, the guy hardly varied from his career 2.178 dismissals per innings. Boucher at 1.975 is hardly far off, yet he varies more, particularly in Oceana.

Of course, this is only basing it on dismissals. I don't know how to see how they fared stopping byes and all that stuff.

For the entirety of Gilly's career Boucher's team was almost as good as Australia. He also kept to great bowlers so it is not as if he was unlucky to keep to dross (though spin was obviously an advantage for Gilly)

Purely stats based, Gilly has a good case for being the best keeper ever. Others may look nicer but his results were as good as you get from a keeper.

Unless it covers all dropped catches, miss-stumpings & the difficultly of these chances, keeping stats don't really tell us anything at all.

To the eye, I recall both Gilchrist & Bouch to be top keepers, with Boucher a little more polished. Neither were in the pure keeping class of Ian Healy.

 

[Blocky]

Boucher and Parore were easily the two best gloves men of that era. Gilchrist was decent, but no where near their consistency.

If you're basing this solely off of "dismissals", you don't get the full story. Dismissals are more to do with how good the bowling attack was, Gilchrist hardly played a test that didn't contain Warne and McGrath.

 

[adub]

Gilly was top shelf. Ridiculous to even consider him not amongst the finest keepers. Just because he was a weapon with the bat doesn't mean he wasn't worth his place purely on his glovework. His work to Warne and MacGill was polished. He was so good standing up he even has an ODI stumping off McGrath. He very rarely missed a chance standing up against two great spinners could could turn it square.

Standing back he was also excellent. Being tall and a good mover he got to some catches others wouldn't even have a crack at. He could get up to higher balls than Healy ever would have reached. Just covered a larger area than almost any other keeper, and he had great hands. All keepers make mistakes, same as even the greatest batsmen have failures, but Gilly's seem to be remembered more by some and Heals' forgotten.

You can't find stats for catches taken/chances etc, and there's no stat to judge the difficulty of chances. But there is one stat that gives an imperfect, but handy indication of how tidy a keeper is - byes conceded.

Gilly conceded 610 byes in his test career of 96454 balls keeping. That's 6.32 byes per 1000 balls. In comparison Healy was a bit tidier at 6.03 byes per 1000 balls. If Healy was better than Gilly then this is a pretty accurate measure of how much (ie sweet **** all).

And Boucher? Without having to keep to great spinners his byes/1000 balls is 6.69. Very good, but not quite top shelf. Bouch was a very good keeper, but Gilly was a bit better.

(to give you a larger comparison the top 9 keepers by dismissals)
- Boucher 6.69
- Gilchrist 6.32
- Healy 6.03
- Marsh 6.13
- Dhoni 7.89 (probably can be partly forgiven due to the amount of home tests, but also not really absolute top shelf)
- Haddin 9.90 (probably a fair indication that he wasn't top class)
- Dujon 10.01 (see Haddin)
- Knott 4.15 (which helps explain to those who never saw him why he is considered the best pure keeper by many many good judges)
- Prior 9.65 (see Haddin and Dujon)

So I think the byes/1000 balls stat gives a pretty handy indicator of keeping quality. But like I said it's imperfect - Matt Wade is at 6.45!

 

[Shri]

Yeah him standing up to Bracken for a while in ODIs was usually excellent.

 

[Blocky]

Gilly was top shelf. Ridiculous to even consider him not amongst the finest keepers. Just because he was a weapon with the bat doesn't mean he wasn't worth his place purely on his glovework. His work to Warne and MacGill was polished. He was so good standing up he even has an ODI stumping off McGrath. He very rarely missed a chance standing up against two great spinners could could turn it square.

Standing back he was also excellent. Being tall and a good mover he got to some catches others wouldn't even have a crack at. He could get up to higher balls than Healy ever would have reached. Just covered a larger area than almost any other keeper, and he had great hands. All keepers make mistakes, same as even the greatest batsmen have failures, but Gilly's seem to be remembered more by some and Heals' forgotten.

You can't find stats for catches taken/chances etc, and there's no stat to judge the difficulty of chances. But there is one stat that gives an imperfect, but handy indication of how tidy a keeper is - byes conceded.

Gilly conceded 610 byes in his test career of 96454 balls keeping. That's 6.32 byes per 1000 balls. In comparison Healy was a bit tidier at 6.03 byes per 1000 balls. If Healy was better than Gilly then this is a pretty accurate measure of how much (ie sweet **** all).

And Boucher? Without having to keep to great spinners his byes/1000 balls is 6.69. Very good, but not quite top shelf. Bouch was a very good keeper, but Gilly was a bit better.

(to give you a larger comparison the top 9 keepers by dismissals)
- Boucher 6.69
- Gilchrist 6.32
- Healy 6.03
- Marsh 6.13
- Dhoni 7.89 (probably can be partly forgiven due to the amount of home tests, but also not really absolute top shelf)
- Haddin 9.90 (probably a fair indication that he wasn't top class)
- Dujon 10.01 (see Haddin)
- Knott 4.15 (which helps explain to those who never saw him why he is considered the best pure keeper by many many good judges)
- Prior 9.65 (see Haddin and Dujon)

So I think the byes/1000 balls stat gives a pretty handy indicator of keeping quality. But like I said it's imperfect - Matt Wade is at 6.45!

Again, not a great measure because you need to consider the bowling attack again...

McGrath, Gillespie and Warne who played a fair few of the tests that Gilchrist played weren't exactly known for spraying it, even Brett Lee wasn't really a sprayer.... taking into account Brad Haddin, having played with Starc and Johnson who on their day would bowl it at third slip, or Harmison for England, or Langeveldt/Nel for South Africa.

 

[Daemon]

Byes in tests probably come from 3 main sources: 1) Bouncers that are too short, 2) Spinners drifting too far down leg and 3) Spinners turning it big away or getting extra bounce using the rough.

That stat appears to give a decent indication but Blocky is right imo, the above are hugely dependent on pitches and the quality of bowling.

 

[adub]

Of course it's dependent, which is why I say it's indicative but imperfect. The stat doesn't tell the whole story (none do) but it does tell you something and that something is worthwhile. In the end the main source of byes isn't the things you've listed Daemon. It is the keeper not getting to the ball cleanly. Some of those balls no keeper could get to, but the best keepers get to more and take the ones they get to cleaner. The variation in the bowling attacks is hard to sustain as a bigger variable than the skill of the keeper. Like with batting and bowling, the variables of the opposition and pitch matter, but the individuals ability is the most important variable.

For instance the variable of keeping to MJ has been raised. Absolutely valid. That **** sprayed em everywhere. But he was always a sprayer. Tbf the records of Wade and Gilly keeping to him are very small samples, but keeping to Johnson saw Haddin's byes/1000 rise to 10.75 and Wades to 8.26. Reasonably supporting the proposition that Johnson's wild ones hurt his keeper's numbers. Gilly though had his byes/1000 rate drop to just 4.52 keeping to Johnson. Keeping to MacGill raises his stat to 7.15, so perhaps it's fairer to say that keeping to MacGilla was far more challenging than to Johnson, which makes Gilchrist's record even more impressive. I don't find it difficult at all to imagine Haddin really struggling behind the sticks to someone like MacGill. Healso's numbers against MacGill also go up to 6.58 so keeping to him wouldn't have been the easiest job in the world.

The really interesting number here is that in matches with Warne Healy's byes/1000 rises up to 7.10. Gilly's drops to 5.98.

Again, the stat is only indicative, but I don't think there's anything in the numbers to indicate keeping to a wayward quick is significantly harder than keeping to a big spinning leggy - in fact the opposite is probably true. Which just makes Gilly's efforts as a keeper even more underrated. It's impossible to know, but hard to imagine that Boucher would have done better keeping to Warne than Gilchrist did.

Gilchrist was absolutely top shelf as a pure keeper. Only a very few could be argued to be better than him. I don't think Boucher can be considered one of them, but he wasn't far behind either.

 

[Blocky]

I know during the era, Boucher was seen as the very best glovesman playing at the time.

Gilchrist was a very good keeper, I don't take anything away from him, but he certainly wasn't rated at Boucher's level when they were both playing and even in my own memory, while I can't remember him making many mistakes, I don't remember him doing the amazing full stretch diving catches that you see Boucher pull off.

 

[cnerd123]

adub dominating this thread

 

[adub]

I know during the era, Boucher was seen as the very best glovesman playing at the time.

Is your name John Snow?

 

[Bahnz]

Gilchrist was actually pretty average when he started out iirc, had a rough first Ashes in particular. But by the end he was pretty close to flawless, and imo was probably a tad more athletic behind the stumps than Boucher.

 

[Adders]

Gilly has more dismissals per innings, a much more consistant year to year, and in all places performance. In fact, the guy hardly varied from his career 2.178 dismissals per innings. Boucher at 1.975 is hardly far off, yet he varies more, particularly in Oceana.

I'm glad you raised this stat, as it conveniently proves a long held belief of mine...........that Jonny Bairstow averaging 2.26 dismissals per innings is clearly better than both of these blokes

 

[Blocky]

Gilchrist was actually pretty average when he started out iirc, had a rough first Ashes in particular. But by the end he was pretty close to flawless, and imo was probably a tad more athletic behind the stumps than Boucher.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=17eDpfqCSX8

Boucher was head and shoulders above Gilchrist at the time; it's really a case of were you watching cricket while they were both playing and not relying on whatever concocted statistics you can come up with around byes/dismissals that are as relevant to the bowling attack as they are the keeper. If the statistics tracked chances vs taken chances for both catches and stumping, not to mention fumbles, etc - then maybe you could rely on statistics.

There were articles and conjecture at the time (around the late nineties, early 00s) that compared the keepers of that era, and had Boucher and Parore ahead.

If we're talking "who is the greatest wicket keeper batsman" - obviously Gilchrist, if we're talking greatest glovesman, he was great, but not as good as Boucher; he was certainly assisted by having the worlds premier spinner (showing in that he took 96 stumpings in far overall matches than it took Boucher to get 46) and also having the worlds best "get me a wicket to the keeper please" bowler in McGrath.

That's not discrediting Gilchrist or making him out to be mediocre, he's probably one of the Top 10 keepers of all time, but Boucher would be high on that list, behind probably only Knott.

 

[Blocky]

Just as a side note, in order for "dismissals per test innings" to become relevant, you'd also have to look at the team's total dismissals per test innings during those same periods... If McGrath, Warne, Gillespie and co were averaging 9 wickets per innings, and Pollock, Ntini and Nel were averaging 7, that would tell a story.