The legendary Australian wicketkeeper Adam Gilchrist wasn’t too impressed with Jos Buttler’s efforts on the first day of the Adelaide Test. The English wicketkeeper dropped two regulation catches. On both occasions, the lucky batsman was Marnus Labuschagne who completed his 6th Test hundred on the second morning of the match.
England had a pretty long day in a slow-going first day at Adelaide and those two drops from Buttler made a significant impact in that. However, earlier in the day he pulled out a screamer down the leg side to dismiss Marcus Harris.
Talking to SEN, the former Australian wicketkeeper spoke at length about various aspects of keeping.
“He’s such a nice guy, but at the end of the day, he is an English cricketer so you can’t have too much sympathy. I’ve been there, done that,” Adam Gilchrist said.
“As we all know, he took an absolute screamer earlier on to get rid of Marcus Harris, one of the great wicketkeeping catches. Then spilt a challenging one, but a slightly easier one of Labuschagne when he was on 21. But that one late in the evening, I can only put it down to concentration.” he added further.
“They have a fairly lazy style and technique in compared to Australian keepers”
The former Australian wicketkeeper also raised questions over the English technique of keeper if their style suits Australia’s pacy and bouncy surfaces.
“I don’t want to get too technical about the English keeping styles and techniques, but I don’t think they’ve ever really suited Australian conditions.”
“They have a fairly lazy style and technique in compared to what we try and teach our youngsters… about foot movement and trying to access the ball. Whatever his technique was it worked well in that first catch of the day, so I think it’s more just concentration.”
On a slow-going day, Australia scored just 221 runs for the loss of 2 wickets in 89 overs at Adelaide.
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