Paine might miss the boat

most catches by any keeper after 30 Tests, a surprising stat that came up on the TV commentary

Amongst Australian keepers, Oldfield is Paine's next target (he won't surpass him) and he's still only behind Gilchrist and Haddin as a batsman.

Not too shabby. If only he hadn't been injured to let in Wade and Neville.

LINK

Dismissals per innings - currently behind two Test keepers only in Australian Test history. Bet you can't guess who ...

He's only recently fallen behind Haddin in terms of batting average ...

Australian wicket-keepers, ordered by batting average (min 10 Tests as wicketkeeper):


47.61 A Gilchrist
32.99 B Haddin
31.58 T Paine
29.12 W Phillips
28.58 M Wade
27.40 I Healy
26.52 R Marsh
22.97 H Carter
22.29 P Nevill
22.65 W Oldfield
20.50 T Zoehrer

That’s a pretty ordinary set of stats, given your keeper basically needs to be able to justify his place as a batsman in this day and age. I know, one or two made up for it by being great keepers, but these days if you don’t average 30+ even at number 7 your place is under threat to a specialist batsman with a pair of cymbals in his cupboard.

The remarkable thing about Paine and Wade is they grew up together in the same street and played many games of backyard cricket together.

The number of catches and stumpings taken is not a good measure of keepers.

- Chances are produced by bowlers and batsmen error. A keeper with poor quality seamers will not get as many chances.
- Spin is harder to keep to and the records of keepers to spin reliant attacks on bunsen burners may be undervalued.
- The only meaningful measure of a keeper's skill is the error rate.

As a very ordinary keeper, I would think about a catch missed, a stumping messed up, a run out flubbed or byes conceded after any game.

One day, chances just landed easily in my gloves and at the end I held the Association record for 8 dismissals - 5 caught and 3 stumped. Not one was difficult. That night I rued the two byes I had let through by lazily not reading a leg side delivery and not getting my weight transfer right.

This is why Zeddy's painstaking work on fielding error (reported in the thread, kindly set up by Lardy) is so important. Incidentally, I was surprised Gilchrist was so high in the error free count.

His keeping was harshly judged because of the initial acrimony about him taking over from Healy. Healy and the Nein commentariat rarely praised his work behind the stumps and instead emphasised his fantastic batting.

I am pretty sure any keeper worth their salt keeps an internal metric of the chances they farked up. I have no doubt Paine thought long and hard later about the two misses he had in Perth.

ARTICLE

He certainly hasn't had an easy decade. Deserves any success that comes his way; he's worked his arse off for it.

Up there with AB in the sainthood stakes. Let's face it anyone who can exist in the same dressing room as that dipshit Warner must have some intestinal fortitude.

Aye. Paine has been a revelation.

skully wrote:Aye. Paine has been a revelation.

Still haven't forgiven him for bowling first at The Oval.

Still haven't forgiven Waugh for the follow on at Eden gardens and bowling Miller too long in Chennai. Two farkups in two tests. Did he set a record for the number of bowlers used in Calcutta. Hayden FFS.

The follow on will haunt him to the grave.

A decision up there with Hughes' in 1981. How the whole of history might have changed there if Australia had batted third there ...