“I always like to be involved in the game and the reality is I’m not very good at bowling.” – Kyle Verreynne
Telford Vice / Seville
ARE you or have you ever been a wicketkeeper? Several people who were in the Oval’s dressing rooms for the third Test between England and South Africa could answer in the affirmative. There’s Ben Foakes and Kyle Verreynne, of course. But also Brendon McCullum and Mark Boucher. And a fair few more where they come from.
Ollie Pope has kept in 134 matches, seven of them first-class for Surrey, England Lions and England — the latter in a Test in Hamilton in 2019. Ben Duckett’s 162 games as a stumper include 13 at first-class level for Northamptonshire. Jack Leach donned the gloves and pads for Somerset’s under-17 side in 2008. In the same match, he bowled 22 overs, batted at No. 3, and captained. Ollie Robinson didn’t do quite as much for Kent under-13s in 2006, when he kept and bowled four overs. But he kept, bowled 24 and 13 overs, and batted at No. 5 for Surrey’s second XI in 2016. Robinson’s not to be confused with the other Ollie Robinson — Oliver George rather than Oliver Edward — who is also a product of Kent, but a career keeper who has been in gloves and pads for 244 of his 286 games, 39 of them first-class, going back to his under-13 days.
Harry Brook, Zak Crawley and Alex Lees each had a game behind the stumps for the Yorkshire and Kent junior representative teams. Lees bowled two overs during his. Joe Root featured in two games as a keeper for Sheffield Collegiate in 2007 and 2008. England have a wicketkeeping coach: James Foster played seven Tests in the position in 2001 and 2002.
Keegan Petersen has been the designated keeper in 10 first-class matches for the Cobras, the Knights, Northern Cape and KwaZulu-Natal Coastal, and Ryan Rickelton in 24 for the Lions and Gauteng. Aiden Markram kept in two games during the 2014 under-19 World Cup. Wiaan Mulder did so in five games for Gauteng’s under-13 side in 2011. As did Glenton Stuurman for South Western Districts in an under-19 game in 2010, when he also opened the batting, and in a match for Balderton — a Nottingham club — in 2016, when he batted at No. 3 and captained the side.
Were it not for the dangerous game of golf, Jonny Bairstow also would have been in the Oval frame with his 139 first-class appearances as a wicketkeeper, 49 of them Tests. He was removed from the equation for the Oval Test by a leg injury sustained on a course near Harrogate seven days before the start of the match.
That almost half the players in the England and South Africa squads — 15 out of the 31 — have wicketkeeping experience, however removed from the senior stage, is the answer to a stinker of a pub quiz question. Another is whether keepers see the game differently, in the way that baseball catchers do because, as former MLB catcher Jeff Torborg famously said, “There must be some reason we’re the only ones facing the other way.”
The issue was more complex in cricket, as Verreynne told Cricbuzz: “Out of 11 players in the team there are probably 11 different views on how the game is going. As a keeper you probably see things differently, but the slips will have a similar view. From reading the game and seeing where it’s at and how the pitch is playing, what the ball’s doing, what the bowler’s trying to do, how the batter’s setting up; all of those things, as a keeper you’ve got one of the best views of all of that. That allows you to add value.”
Measuring that value isn’t straightforward. According to Rivash Gobind, South Africa’s analyst, Verreynne collected 152 of the 271 legal deliveries that were bowled to England’s batters in the first Test. Seventy of them were left alone, and 82 were played at and missed. The equation changed at Old Trafford, where Verreynne dealt with 108 of 640 balls, 56 of them left and 52 missed. He also took six catches and claimed a stumping. So almost 30% of all the balls bowled to English players in the first two Tests became his responsibility. Without a wicketkeeper to stop those deliveries going to the boundary, England would have scored 1,068 more runs than the 729 they made. Maybe that’s how a keeper’s worth should be calculated.
How Ben Stokes isn’t on the list of once were wicketkeepers in the series is as good a question as any considering the gloves are often worn, particularly at lower levels, by the best player in the side or the best athlete; regardless of keeping aptitude. And Stokes is a freakishly gifted player and athlete.
Too gifted, perhaps, for the working class heroism of keeping wicket. The labour of even the most elite keepers tends to go if not unnoticed then under-noticed. Perhaps that’s because they are seen as batters first and stumpers second. It wasn’t always that way. Of the 285 men who have served as the designated keeper in Tests, 181 have never scored a century at that level. Only seven of the 285 — 3.87% — have played a Test in the 2020s.
Test cricket has fallen out of love with keepers like Wasim Bari, Deryck Murray and Niroshan Dickwella — who have had 112, 96 and 92 innings without scoring a century — and become drawn to the likes of Andy Flower, Kumar Sangakkara, MS Dhoni, Mushfiqur Rahim, Taslim Arif, Imtiaz Ahmed, BJ Watling, Adam Gilchrist and Brendon Kuruppu, who have each scored a double century and made 60 hundreds between them. Dickwella is a throwback in that he is still at it, whereas Bari had his last Test as a keeper in 1984 and Murray in 1980. The trailblazer for the modern trend was Ahmed, who played all of his 41 Tests between 1952 and 1962.
Foakes and Verreynne are members in good standing of the stumpers’ century society. Foakes made 107 on debut in Galle in 2018 and 113 not out at Old Trafford in the second Test against South Africa, and Verreynne scored an undefeated 136 in Christchurch in February. But the England-South Africa series was unusual in that, unlike many of their peers, who came to keeping after making a name for themselves with the bat, Foakes and Verreynne have been there since they were about as tall as the stumps themselves.
“It started for me as an under-10, where it’s all about giving everyone equal opportunity,” Verreynne said. “In my first two or three games of hard-ball cricket, I opened the bowling and the batting. I don’t know how I opened the bowling, but I did. But the coach realised he couldn’t let me do everything. He said he needed to give the other guys opportunities. So I needed to choose if I wanted to bat high in the order and not bowl as much, or bowl and not bat as much. I chose batting. But I found myself pretty bored standing in the field. I asked, seeing as I wasn’t bowling much, if I could keep. He said sure. From the next game I kept, and ever since then I’ve been a keeper.”
Sixteen years on, Verreynne hasn’t changed his mind: “You definitely go through times when keeping isn’t as fun, but I always like to be involved in the game and the reality is I’m not very good at bowling. In the field, you go through phases where you’re standing on the boundary or in the covers, and not much is happening. It’s always enjoyable being on the field, but it’s a lot more enjoyable knowing that you’re in the game every single ball and you’ve got a chance to make a difference and make an impact. Keeping is hard work, but I’d rather have that than standing in the outfield waiting for something to happen.”
Foakes first kept wicket as an under-12, and was proclaimed as “the best wicketkeeper in the world” four years ago by no less than Alec Stewart, who played 303 internationals for England across the formats, 220 of them as a keeper and 51 as a captain and keeper. Besides, Foakes looks the part — all subtle, silky movements and artful crumpling of his lanky frame. That smooths over the fact that, at 1.85 metres, he is taller than many who spend most of their working lives in a crouch. Verreynne is 10 centimetres shorter than Foakes, and consequently has to act more emphatically to haul in more wayward deliveries. “You get guys who are tall who can move a lot better than I can, and you get short guys who can jump a lot higher than I can,” Verreynne said. Still, there was little to separate Foakes and Verreynne in overall effectiveness during the series. Foakes conceded 15 byes in the rubber and Verreynne 14. Each dropped a catch.
Did Verreynne take notes on his counterpart? “He’s tall and has good reach. I’m quite short and I don’t have reach as good as his. So it’s difficult to implement what he does because our styles of keeping are very different and we have different assets. But I have picked up a few things. There’s nothing specific, but I’ve seen that he’s done a lot of work on the wobbling ball and the ball that swings after it passes the bat.”
The Oval Test was Verreynne’s 57th first-class match behind the stumps and his 11th Test, and Foakes’ 104th and 17th, a difference not lost on Dean Elgar, who said of Verreynne: “He’s learning his trade at the toughest level, and he’s getting better every time I see him prepare or play. It’s nice to have a guy who’s young and still pushing the boundaries for himself. You can see he’s doing things that no-one is telling him to do, and his keeping is unreal. He’s a really good team guy and everyone loves him.”
Charl Langeveldt, South Africa’s bowling coach, agreed that bowlers gained confidence from knowing they had a pro behind the stumps: “I’ve seen a lot of keepers come to England over the years and struggle, especially on their first tour. And nevermind the bouncers Anrich Nortjé bowls. I need to get Kyle a ladder! He’s been excellent, especially when the ball has gone down leg and when he has had to dive forward.”
Mark Boucher was a case study in a keeper undone by English conditions. In his first Test series there, in 1998, he dived one way while the ball veered the other after pitching often enough for Jonathan Agnew to lament on commentary, “Poor old Boucher.” The byes mounted to 89 — 8.9 per innings. But keepers tend to be quick learners: when Boucher was next in England, in 2003, he kept the byes down to 37 — 4.63 per innings. In 2008, that shrank to 25 — 3.13 per innings.
Boucher learnt a few things to pass down to Verreynne. Who needs a keeping coach when the head coach has been there for 147 Tests? “His experience in England gives him valuable input that he’s been giving me,” Verreynne said. “I’ve tried to tap into him as much as possible; what worked for him, what didn’t work for him.” But Verreynne understood that the buck — even the ball — stopped with him, physically and mentally: “Coming to England I was aware of what the conditions were going to be like. It’s been about me putting in as much preparation as I possibly can. Something ‘Bouch’ has mentioned quite a bit to me is, you are going to make mistakes. What’s important is that you are able to put them behind you and focus on the next ball.”
Verreynne’s performance was remarkable considering his previous keeping experience in England amounted to a single T20 for North Devon in 2016. How had he made the required adjustment? “I’ve spent more time than usual on my keeping in England. When you’re in South Africa there’s not as much wobble and swing after the bat. I wouldn’t spend as much time on keeping as I have here, where keeping is as much if not more of a focus than batting.”
Like most aspects of fielding, keeping can be learnt. Hence the fashion for turning batters into keepers. Boucher, for instance, was a batter until his penultimate year of high school. But keepers wouldn’t get far without showing, early on, a gift for the role. Which mattered more, technique or talent? “Technically it’s important that you have a few things covered,” Verreynne said. “But keeping is instinctive. You have a feeling for what the pitch is playing like, what the ball is doing. You allow your instincts to take over in terms of where you’re standing and how you’re trying to catch the ball and position yourself. But there’s value in having a good technical base.”
Verreynne didn’t value giving opponents lip: “With stumps mics, the game has moved away from personal abuse and sledging. I’m not going to get engaged in on-field conflicts. I try and focus on having good energy and keeping the team going. I make sure everyone is switched on at all times, and in the right fielding position and aware of the plans. Being noisy and getting in the batter’s face isn’t me.”
He will likely be South Africa’s keeper in their series in Australia in December and January. Given the Aussies’ propensity for verbal violence, Verreynne’s opinion on that part of the keeper’s craft is sure to be tested.
First published by Cricbuzz.
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