In praise of... Matt Prior

There was a time, not so long ago, when the thought of writing this would have been as far from my mind as a piece praising Zaheer Khan’s physical fitness. When Matt Prior first came into the England side he represented everything that was wrong about attitudes to wicket keeping: his batting was fine, although nowhere near the level that it is today, but his keeping wasn’t even first class standard, let alone test standard. His glovework was clumsy and his footwork non-existent. I, a fully paid up member of the Campaign for Real Wicket-keepers, watched, appalled, through my fingers as the ball rebounded from hard hands and he launched himself into another fruitless dive from an entirely static position. He epitomised Duncan Fletcher’s ludicrous assertion that you can teach someone to catch but you can’t teach them to bat and seemed to have bought wholeheartedly into the false notion that in order to be an effective keeper you also had to behave like an idiot, as the infamous jelly bean incident showed. He was the bastard lovechild of Geraint Jones and Kamran Akmal. You may have gathered by now that I wasn’t a fan.

How times change. After a poor run of form saw him ditched from the England side in favour of Tim Ambrose he starting working with Bruce French, a much underrated technician behind the stumps, and his keeping has improved spectacularly. His glovework is tidy and his footwork, an all too frequently neglected aspect of keeping (see Brad Haddin for details) is unobtrusive and effective. Balls that once would have prompted a desperate dive are now collected on his feet, although the departure of Steve Harmison from the England side may also have helped.

At the same time his batting, which was always handy, has blossomed. I have seen hm bat twice in the flesh this year, in the Lord’s tests against Sri Lanka and India, and on both occasions he made a hundred, piercing the offside field with aplomb and driving and pulling effectively when the bowling strayed onto his legs. When Michael Vaughan suggested during the first test that he is currently the best wicket-keeper batsman playing test cricket he was greeted with some derision from proponents of MS Dhoni, but there is no doubt that he was right. Such has been his improvement that he may even be the best pure keeper currently playing test cricket, something that would have been inconceivable a few years ago.

His importance to England now cannot be understated. To have a number seven who not only averages in the mid-forties with the bat but who also scores at such a rate that he can take the game away from the opposition in a session is a luxury that is afforded to very few sides. In both of the games mentioned above he came to the crease with England some way short of where they wanted to be but through a combination of scintillating stroke play and aggressive running he took the game away from the opposition in a manner that was almost Gilchrist-esque.

Of course there is still the odd blemish and he can still be vulnerable to the ball moving back into him, especially early in his innings when he can play rather waftily around off stump, but he has become a vital cog in an increasingly impressive England side. I can’t remember many cricketers who have improved so dramatically after making their test debut, for which both he and his coaches deserve the utmost praise. All hail Matt Prior.