Alex Carey

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RedVest4 said:
Lol at thinking keeping on an even bouncing pitch like the Gabba is equivalent of india. He was hopeless with the gloves in the second innings at Adelaide which doesn’t bode well for the future
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Missing one chance doesn't make him hopeless. Was faultless otherwise.

You're trying to find something that isn't there and it's embarrassing.
 

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1990crow said:
Missing one chance doesn't make him hopeless. Was faultless otherwise.

You're trying to find something that isn't there and it's embarrassing.
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he was sloppy on numerous occasions with the gloves and the Buttler let off was massive for the game context. Let through byes (plus a couple of misses they didn’t run for)
 
Feel like everyone is always quick to leap to extremes with Carey. Either gets called an absolute gun who adjusts smoothly to international cricket or gets called a dud who can’t keep. Neither is true based on evidence at this stage. He’s kept solidly but hasn’t had many tough chances. Missed one chance but more through a lack of assertiveness than bad hands. Batting has had one nice knock and a few missed chances. It’s just way too early to be making calls either way on him.
 
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Ducky Tie said:
Feel like everyone is always quick to leap to extremes with Carey. Either gets called an absolute gun who adjusts smoothly to international cricket or gets called a dud who can’t keep. Neither is true based on evidence at this stage. He’s kept solidly but hasn’t had many tough chances. Missed one chance but more through a lack of assertiveness than bad hands. Batting has has one nice knock and a few missed chances. It’s just way too early to be making calls either way on him.
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He'll get better at reading Lyon, he can't have kept to him much.
 
Poor Carey, if he played for any other country he wouldn't have so much pressure on him to score a 50 every second dig and be our next Gilly.

Has played well so far, slight hiccup by leaving the Buttler catch to first slip - other than that he's been great for a new player coming into the side. Judge him once he's placed 10-20 tests.
 
Turning out to be a pretty ordinary debut series for Carey. Taken plenty of catches but all pretty straightforward chances. Two drops and two he's watched go by him now. Averaging 15 with the bat. Admittedly the circumstances of some of those dismissals have required aggressive batting, but he's missed most opportunities to score and played some poor shots. To be fair, he was in pretty ordinary Shield form coming in, so it's unsurprising that he hasn't suddenly found great form.

He's clearly a competent cricketer, but he's far from locked away the spot long term. The gushing following his first match was premature. He'll definitely go to Pakistan and he'll probably get most/all of the away series in 2022. I can see him struggling in the sub-continent though (as will several of our players). If we get to the end of the three away series and he's averaging 20 odd and still missing chances, it's hard to see him making it to next summer.
 
I really think, if we see Green as a long term middle order option, that we need to develop a keeper who can bat inside the top 5. At the moment, that means opening, and Carey can and has opened at most levels of cricket before.

Essentially, Head at 6, Green at 7, leave Khawaja at 5 and promote Carey to 1 and bat him with Warner. If you want a spin bowling all rounder, drop one of Hazelwood/Green (depending on where you are; Green is both a better bat and is a mite quicker than Josh is, but dropping Hazelwood in England is the epitome of stupid) and promote your Maxwells of the world to bat middle order; higher than 7, at least.

Essentially, having a keeper as an opening bat opens the middle order up significantly.
 

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Gethelred said:
I really think, if we see Green as a long term middle order option, that we need to develop a keeper who can bat inside the top 5. At the moment, that means opening, and Carey can and has opened at most levels of cricket before.

Essentially, Head at 6, Green at 7, leave Khawaja at 5 and promote Carey to 1 and bat him with Warner. If you want a spin bowling all rounder, drop one of Hazelwood/Green (depending on where you are; Green is both a better bat and is a mite quicker than Josh is, but dropping Hazelwood in England is the epitome of stupid) and promote your Maxwells of the world to bat middle order; higher than 7, at least.

Essentially, having a keeper as an opening bat opens the middle order up significantly.
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All good except you can’t expect Carey to keep for 100 overs and then bat straight away. It’s too much
 
Gethelred said:
I really think, if we see Green as a long term middle order option, that we need to develop a keeper who can bat inside the top 5. At the moment, that means opening, and Carey can and has opened at most levels of cricket before.

Essentially, Head at 6, Green at 7, leave Khawaja at 5 and promote Carey to 1 and bat him with Warner. If you want a spin bowling all rounder, drop one of Hazelwood/Green (depending on where you are; Green is both a better bat and is a mite quicker than Josh is, but dropping Hazelwood in England is the epitome of stupid) and promote your Maxwells of the world to bat middle order; higher than 7, at least.

Essentially, having a keeper as an opening bat opens the middle order up significantly.
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you are entitled to your opinion, but i'm glad you're not a selector.

if anything - green shows promise to be batting at 5, perhaps sometime later in his career.

we need to develop a keep who can bat in the top 5? like who? only gilchrist averaged over 33 and scored more than 4 test tons. i think that's the problem - gilchrist has left since a high benchmark, yet he is a once in a generation type player.
they don't grow on trees and carey is nothing more than a number 7 in the test arena. if he averages 30+ for his career, it's more than adequate.

we have 5 batsmen with a test ave of 40+ and they should be our top 5 (warner, khawaja, labuschagne, smith & head). pucovski should be in the mix as well when fit and available.

extended runs have been given to the likes of harris, bancroft, renshaw, burns, finch, handscomb, s.marsh, wade etc and who knows where kurtis patterson sits.
 
cricketnut14 said:
you are entitled to your opinion, but i'm glad you're not a selector.
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I'm intrigued.

Would you be so inclined to make a like observation to someone away from the safety of the keyboard?

if anything - green shows promise to be batting at 5, perhaps sometime later in his career.
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That's nice hun. Remind me what Green's late innings career has to do with my post.
we need to develop a keep who can bat in the top 5? like who? only gilchrist averaged over 33 and scored more than 4 test tons. i think that's the problem - gilchrist has left since a high benchmark, yet he is a once in a generation type player.
they don't grow on trees and carey is nothing more than a number 7 in the test arena. if he averages 30+ for his career, it's more than adequate.

we have 5 batsmen with a test ave of 40+ and they should be our top 5 (warner, khawaja, labuschagne, smith & head). pucovski should be in the mix as well when fit and available.
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Ah, convention.

Thank you for telling me things I already know, while insisting they're sagest wisdom. Need you further assert that the sky is blue?

When someone is suggesting something unconventional, telling someone that it's unconventional isn't asserting anything that isn't known already.

Failure to consider something outside of convention purely on the basis that it's unconventional is intellectually lazy.
extended runs have been given to the likes of harris, bancroft, renshaw, burns, finch, handscomb, s.marsh, wade etc and who knows where kurtis patterson sits.
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... exactly. Thank you for demonstrating my point.

Since Rogers, name the opener who has averaged above the averages for keepers you mention above. If I had the leasure or the impetus, I'd work out what the average for the bat opposite Warner since Rogers is.

Elevating a keeper who can replicate that average and keep passably would unlock the middle order, which is what my post suggested.
bh90210fan said:
All good except you can’t expect Carey to keep for 100 overs and then bat straight away. It’s too much
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See, cricketnut14, that's how you do criticism.

I'd argue that throughout test history there have been a number of individuals who have the focus required to both keep and then open the batting, and there are any number of players who do it at the level down.

I suppose my point is this: I am much more willing to allow a bat to average less runs at the top of the order (when they have two blokes that average 60 behind them) than I am in the middle order with only bowlers behind them, regardless of whether one of them is called Mitchell Starc and averaging in the 50's for the series. I'm also talking about next test, when we are unassailably in the lead in the series and will go in at worst at 3-0, not necessarily doing this as more than a transitional thing unless it works extremely well.
 
We need to get back to the basics of picking the best keeper at Shield level (which means they'll at least be a moderate bat). They've made their choice with Carey and you can't really drop him now, he'll play until next summer given the India tour seems to have been delayed, but it seems we've missed a trick not blooding someone younger.
 
to1994 said:
We need to get back to the basics of picking the best keeper at Shield level (which means they'll at least be a moderate bat). They've made their choice with Carey and you can't really drop him now, he'll play until next summer given the India tour seems to have been delayed, but it seems we've missed a trick not blooding someone younger.
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The sad thing is the standard of actual glovework in the shield is not very high.

Paine was still probably our best gloveman, which is concerning because he is a good couple of levels down on the keeper he was 10 years ago prior to his broken finger.
 
Is it really a great surprise that Carey is an ordinary test gloveman, have people watched his ODI & T20 career?
 
Every missed chance is probably worth what, 20 to 30 runs in average?

If a keeper is regularly missing chances others wouldn't then only an amazing batting average, like Gilly's, should keep them in the side ahead of a very good keeper.

No to an opening keeper. Warner will retire soon and we need to develop proper options at 1 and 2.

The keeper can be an 8 or 9 for all I care. Starc should be 7.
 
kickazz said:
Every missed chance is probably worth what, 20 to 30 runs in average?
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Yeah, I think that is about fair.

But it would be incorrect to say Carey missed 3 (or was it 4?) catching chances plus the run out and just dock him 120 (or 150) runs straight up without considering what the track record of the alternatives would have been.

Obviously we don't know for sure because it's in an alternative universe but how confident would one be that Inglis (or Paine) would have taken all of those chances himself? I certainly couldn't be. Inglis himself isn't a great gloveman (I would rate him a bit below Carey) and whilst I think Paine is a better keeper, he was far from faultless himself in the Indian series and at 35/36yo it seemed like that final decline was kicking in.

If a keeper is regularly missing chances others wouldn't then only an amazing batting average, like Gilly's, should keep them in the side ahead of a very good keeper.
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Agreed - unfortunately that keeper doesn't exist in our first class system at the moment. We don't have anyone of Adam Gilchrist's standard of keeping, let alone a Darren Berry or Chris Hartley standard floating around. If the equivalent of Berry or Hartley was playing shield cricket now, I would have them in the team in an absolute heartbeat.

Without the captaincy it's a 50/50 call between Paine and Carey. Paine the slightly better keeper, Carey the slightly better batsmen. Inglis slightly behind them in both categories, but with age on his side. I haven't seen enough of Harper to comment. Nevill looked like he had all the pieces to be a good test keeper-batsmen but completely botched his time in the baggy green and will look back on that with a lot of regret I feel.

Carey had a decent first test but has definitely been a bit jittery since. Like just about any modern keeper his footwork behind the stumps is not good enough. The perfect example was that Hameed drop where his right foot just did not even move towards the ball. His right foot actually took a tiny step to the leg side away from the ball to try and use it as a launching pad, rather than getting his feet and head as close to the line of the ball as possible and take what should have been a relatively simple two handed catch.

I think Carey will be safe for a little while but if he is at the same standard this time next year, the selectors may look for a younger option in Inglis. There should also be some natural improvement from Inglis over the next 12 months and he might just overtake Carey anyway. Any improvement from Carey is going to be more related to nerves and mentality - at 30 years of age what you see in his technical ability is the keeper that he is and I don't think that is going to improve too much at his age.
 
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