Top 5 current wicket-keeper batsmen in Test cricket
An art that has become as valuable as any other in any format of the game is the ability of a wicket-keeper – and a good one at that – to show some skills with the bat, and contribute to the team’s total. While in T20 cricket, every batsman is as important as the other and is expected to hit the ball right from the word go, in Test matches, the skills required of them revolve around patience, and the ability to spend some time at the crease. To do that after having kept wickets for close to 90 overs requires extreme levels of fitness and the hunger to score runs for the team.
In this context, amongst the current crop of cricketers, there have been certain wicket-keeper batsmen who have stepped up whenever the team has asked them to and have scored runs apart from their usual jobs of keeping wickets and keeping them well. There was a time when the likes of Adam Gilchrist, Mark Boucher, Moin Khan, Alec Stewart and Adam Parore played in the same era.
However, since the departure of these cricketers, teams have struggled with finding a stable option for the aforementioned role. Names have been thrown around, players have been tested, but with the exception of MS Dhoni none of them could withstand the test of time. In recent past, although, few cricketers have emerged who, through their performances over the past couple of seasons or so, have claimed a definite stake for the position of a wicketkeeper-batsman.
In this piece, we enumerate five such names who have become permanent members of their respective Test sides and have established themselves as viable batting options for their teams apart from their skills behind the stumps.
#5 Wriddhiman Saha (India)
For a wicketkeeper in India to actually make it out of MS Dhoni’s shadows and claim a spot for himself in the national side is an achievement in itself. That it came after the former’s retirement from Tests is a different thing. What matters is the fact that when the opportunity came, Saha was ready to grab it with both hands.
Post the culmination of the year 2014, the Bengal-born batsman was selected as the first choice keeper ahead of other local stalwarts like Parthiv Patel and Naman Ojha. In the first ten innings that he played post-Dhoni’s retirement, Saha got two fifties to his name and a couple of 30s as well.
Batting at No. 6, in line with Virat Kohli’s philosophy of playing five specialist bowlers, Saha played the role of a lower-order batsman to some amount of success, with his vital contributions in testing situations. His moment of reckoning, however, came during the recently-concluded Test series against the West Indies, wherein he scored his maiden Test hundred, in the third Test in St. Lucia, and thereby further solidified his position in the team.
Although his record of 572 runs from 15 Tests at 27.23 borders on mediocrity, they are only expected to get better as Saha plays more and more for India.