In re­cent times, the po­si­tion of West In­dies wick­et­keep­er has gen­er­at­ed a fair amount of com­ment and no lit­tle con­tro­ver­sy.In its 86-year his­to­ry of Test crick­et, the Windies have field­ed 30 wick­et­keep­ers, from Karl Nunes (1928-1930), our first Test wick­et­keep­er and cap­tain, to De­nesh Ramdin (2005-present), our cur­rent some­time vice-cap­tain. Many held the po­si­tion very briefly, two for one match and three for two.

Some no­ta­bles, keep­ing in less than 10 match­es in­clude: Ro­han Kan­hai (1957) and Desmond Lewis (1971) for three Tests; Karl Nunes (1928-1930) in four match­es; Clair­monte De Pieza (1955-1956) earn­ing five caps; Clif­ford McWatt (1954-1955) for six match­es; Simp­son Guillen (1951-1956) in eight Tests.

Se­lect­ed da­ta on the ca­reers of the 14 who kept wick­et for 10 or more match­es make in­ter­est­ing analy­sis. Jeff Du­jon's per­for­mance as the longest serv­ing keep­er (81 Tests), stands out, emerg­ing ahead in dis­missals (275), runs scored (3,322), cen­turies (5) and 50s (16).His bat­ting av­er­age (31.9) is on­ly sur­passed by Clyde Wal­cott (40.4), who kept wick­et in his first 15 Tests and had a re­mark­able 11 stump­ings, sec­ond to Ri­d­ley Ja­cobs (12).

In 65 Test ap­pear­ances, Ja­cobs ac­cu­mu­lat­ed 2,577 runs at a rea­son­able av­er­age of 28.3. These sta­tis­tics, in ad­di­tion to his three cen­turies, four­teen 50s and 219 dis­missals, marked a ca­reer which ar­guably ranks him sec­ond over­all to Du­jon.

Oth­er se­ri­ous con­tenders for wick­et­keep­ing ho­n­ours are Ger­ry Alexan­der, Deryck Mur­ray and De­nesh Ramdin. Alexan­der's bat­ting av­er­age of 30.0 in 25 Tests, scor­ing 961 runs is ahead of Ramdin's 27.3 from 2,235 runs made in 56 match­es and Mur­ray's 22.9 from 1,993 runs scored in 62 Tests.

Ramdin with four Test cen­turies tops Alexan­der (1) and Mur­ray (0); while both he and Mur­ray hit eleven 50s com­pared to Alexan­der's 7. Mur­ray's 181 catch­es and 8 stump­ings sur­pass Ramdin's 156 catch­es and 5 stump­ings and Alexan­der's 85 catch­es and 5 stump­ings. On bal­ance, the analy­sis places Ramdin ahead of this group in terms of over­all per­for­mance.

To put things in per­spec­tive, if we ranked wick­et­keep­ers on dis­missals ef­fect­ed, runs scored, bat­ting av­er­age and cen­turies/50s made, on­ly Du­jon, Ja­cobs and Ramdin fea­ture in the top five in all cat­e­gories.

Carl­ton Baugh and De­nesh Ramdin are the on­ly con­tem­po­rary spe­cial­ist keep­ers whose met­tle has been bat­tle-hard­ened in the cru­cible of Test crick­et. Baugh has com­piled 610 runs at an av­er­age of 17.9 in a 21-Test match ca­reer thus far, scor­ing three 50s, while ef­fect­ing 50 dis­missals (45 catch­es and five stump­ings).

This brief re­view gives a peek at a rich his­to­ry but equal­ly draws at­ten­tion to the cur­rent con­text. Three ques­tions im­me­di­ate­ly arise. Are we cre­at­ing un­due, un­nec­es­sary stress, tur­bu­lence and un­cer­tain­ty by not sta­bil­is­ing the po­si­tion of wick­et­keep­er in the West In­dies crick­et team?

What cri­te­ria and analy­sis are ap­plied in as­sess­ing abil­i­ty, ap­ti­tude and per­for­mance to de­ter­mine se­lec­tion of this spe­cial­ist field­er? To what ex­tent the seem­ing­ly ex­ces­sive em­pha­sis on the bat­ting per­for­mance of the keep­er is un­fair, a fig leaf bare­ly cov­er­ing the un­re­li­a­bil­i­ty of the top or­der bats­men?

Win­ston R Rud­der

Pe­tit Val­ley