Cricket Diary: Kieswetter's rise, Davies's fall

By Richard Gibson

Craig Kieswetter is set to oust rival Steven Davies for the back-up wicketkeeper position on England’s Test tour to India this winter.

Kieswetter, England’s first-choice gloveman in limited-overs cricket, is uncapped at Test level but averages 50 in Division One of the County Championship in comparison to Surrey man Davies’s disappointing 23.

The 24-year-old Somerset player was also impressive with the bat for England Lions in the recent ‘Test’ series against Australia A with one member of the hierarchy suggesting that at his current rate of improvement he could be soon be considered as a frontline batsman.

Kieswetter’s tightening of his technique is a subject that has been touched upon at selection meetings, and it did not go unnoticed that he combated the spinning track and Australia A spin twins Nathan Lyon and Jon Holland in the second innings at Old Trafford to hit an unbeaten 66. He then followed up with an 114 not out in the final match of a rain-hit series at Edgbaston.

And with spin set to present the primary challenge in India, it was an ideal time to showcase his credentials – England are scheduled to name their first Test squad since Andrew Strauss’s retirement before they head off to Sri Lanka for the World Twenty20 next week.

Meanwhile, Davies has endured an underwhelming season and was left out of Surrey’s penultimate Championship contest due to ‘poor form’.

Davies, 26, has been understudy to Matt Prior for the past two winters, comprising the 2010-11 Ashes and away series against Pakistan and Sri Lanka, and was also put on standby earlier this summer when Prior suffered an eye infection on the eve of a Test against West Indies.

However, his displays have suffered since the death of team-mate Tom Maynard in June, a period which has coincided with Kieswetter’s star rising.

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Graeme Smith returned home to South Africa this week with his stock higher than ever courtesy of a third Test series unbeaten in England.

But the 31-year-old - who has seen off three England captains in Nasser Hussain, Michael Vaughan and Andrew Strauss, the latter two following wins - could be back again next year with a different agenda.

Smith is interesting more than one county as an overseas player for 2013 – and is obvious leadership material for those wanting a fresh start.

Spending the summer over here would be an attractive proposition as his wife, former pop star Morgan Deane, is Irish.

However, any deal would be dependent on whether Smith returns to play in the sixth edition of the Indian Premier League next spring – he signed a three-year deal with Pune Warriors in 2011 but pulled out of the second season of that agreement with an ankle injury.

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West Indies are planning to throw the new ball to a 30-something school teacher in their bid to win the World Twenty20 later this month.

Samuel Badree, 31, who teaches PE at a Trinidad secondary school is something of a late arrival on the international scene – having only made his Windies debut earlier this year.

The leg-spinner was preferred to more experienced twirlers Sulieman Benn, Devendra Bishoo and Shane Shillingford in the West Indies’ 15-man squad, and one glance at his career statistics give an indication why.

Although Badree has only 14 first-class wickets during a 10-year career, it is 20-over cricket that has provided a platform for his main skill - miserliness.

His career economy rate is 4.59, and the next best by anyone to have played in excess of 25 matches is team-mate Sunil Narine with 5.28.

What makes these figures even more astonishing is that more often than not he takes the new ball and bowls through his entire allocation up front. Back in the autumn of 2008, his spell of 4-0-15-1 for Trinidad & Tobago came within a whisker of embarrassing England during a Stanford Super Series warm-up.

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Date: 09/09/2012 10:05:33 by Richard Gibson
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