I love wicketkeeping.
I don’t know why. I was never that good at it.
Recently I bought a book about great keepers of the ages. That makes me one of the great wicket keeping nerds of all time.
Give me a yarn about side stepping and side stepping and I’m all yours.
That is why I feel ill now.
I’ve had to sit and commentate a whole day of Kamran Akmal “keeping”.
That is right, his wicket keeping is now so shit that it can’t even be called keeping, you need the “” there to really explain it.
Akmal has never been a great keeper, but at times he was as serviceable as any batsman with keeping gloves on.
Now he is the very worst of wicket keeping.
Today he missed a stumping that couldn’t have been easier if Collingwood had told him he’d dance down the wicket and miss one on purpose.
He dropped a catch that was so simple that if he was a make shift keeper you’d be furious.
Then was the fact he spent the whole day standing a metre or two further back that he needed to.
Almost every ball bounced before him, yet he never moved up. Never. He stopped most of them, but Morgan edged one when he was on very few, and it didn’t carry.
Kamran couldn’t be surprised, the ball hadn’t reached him all day, there was little bounce in the wicket, and so he just had to move up. He didn’t and Morgan is over a hundred not out.
But as bad as the dropped catch, the missed stumping and the standing back was, the worst thing I saw was a moment where he just let a ball go past him.
That Kamran has bad hands and no foot work is a given, but this leave was pure laziness.
Asif had come around the wicket to whichever left handed opener was facing and fired one in at the stumps.
It swung in, but it was always going to miss leg stump even if it didn’t swing.
The ball flew down the legside and went to the rope without anyone touching it.
Kamran didn’t even lean over to the legside, his left foot looked like it was still outside off stump when this happened.
He just watched it happen, never moving, or trying to prevent it.
The ball just went by him.
It was as shit as you could get.
If you showed this to Bert Oldfield, George Duckworth and Tiger Smith they’d die again.
I like Kamran Akmal.
Not as a “keeper”, but he seems to have survived so much shit in Pakistan cricket and be their only regular player, that takes something.
But as a keeper he is a puddle of Vomit.
And today I felt like I was covered in that vomit all day.
Even worse than Party Patel?
Parthiv Patel was terrible when he had to keep to the spinners. He did alright to the (medium) pacers. Funny thing is: He had the hardest time against Kumble who does not turn the ball much at all.. I don’t know what to make of that..
Jrod,
I cannot forgive Kamran Akmal for his performance in the Sydney Test Match. As all cricket fans will recall he missed 4 catches and a run out opportunity. The final catch he missed off Peter Siddle on the 4th morning defied belief. Many people including myself questioned the integrity of his performance after that display. As far as I could ascertain he was not carrying an injury or suffering illness.
Once again I am disgusted by his incompetence. These displays for me are bringing Test cricket into disrepute. It is bad enough for us fans to suffer the disgraceful batting pitches that are rolled out, but too add to that wicket-keepers who are not even first-class standard is too hard to cop. I hope this is not another performance where we will be left questioning his integrity and therefore the integrity of cricket.
I like him, He is funny. But it’s part of the general cricket thinking of picking batsmen who own gloves rather than keepers. Not that anyone else picks one that shit.
Top marks for this line:
If you showed this to Bert Oldfield, George Duckworth and Tiger Smith they’d die again.
Kamran….. a well know wicket keeper not becoz of his good keeping but coz of his attitude behind the stump…. if he miss one chance in any match … make sure he will miss atleast 4-5 more chance … Dear believe it he is only regular paki player in the whole squade of 14 players even wid did performance…..
Even Tait can do better wk then him. Whos with me?
ohhh man Keeping is not easy at all, I am good slip catcher and they decided to give me gloves. I failed many times. So, gave up on that. Must need good keeper in Test at least. Because one drop can cost you millions of runs. I like Akmal, I am sure he has forced himself to be a keeper to get stable into side. I don’t like forced keeper unless you are Dravid. Pakistan must come up with better keeper and retain Kamran as a batsman. Keepers are allrounder of team. Their importance as a batsman was started from Gilly, and that good mutation spread to all the countries. Well, Alec Stewart was all right keeper/batsman though. This guy looks like he is afraid that Is he going to catch that or not, in process your mind tell you to be extra cautious and your hand even become more stiff, eventually you drop even more catches. Its terrible feeling to drop a catch.
It’s concentration. I’m sure sometimes he is thinking about what he watched on telly last night or his kids or something far unrelated to cricket even as the ball is being bowled.
That miss off Asif, sure he might not have got it, but he literally stood there like he wasn’t the keeper.
It’s so weird watching him have these games of death where he may as well have saucepan lids on his hands and medicine balls around his feet.