94: Alan Knott

95 Tests. 4,389 runs @ 32.75. 5 hundreds. 250 catches. 19 stumpings.

13 years. 1x good. 2x excellent.

The discussion

Do not be offended by the ‘one word’ I have chosen to describe English wicketkeeper Alan Knott. For among the enigmatic fraternity of ‘pure wicketkeepers’ (as opposed to batters who keep), tidiness is next to godliness. Or some such similar saying that all true wicketkeepers will nod sagely at, with a wink to their fellow glovemen, while the rest of us look on, puzzled and none the wiser.

Wicketkeepers are a breed apart. I have several in my cricketing family, and my experience of keepers is that they are nothing if not fastidious in their preparation, and sharp in their analysis of fellow wicketkeepers. In fact, as soon as my father got wind of the concept of the Hall of Fame, his first question was how I was to consider wicketkeepers, particularly wicketkeepers I hadn’t seen. In the eras prior to the big-bat era, the measure of a wicketkeeper was largely measured with the eye test. This is very difficult to evaluate having not seen them. Both my grandfather and my brother are wicketkeepers, so I must tread carefully in my analysis.

I have managed to find enough highlights of Alan Knott on video to make my own judgment in this case. To watch Alan Knott was to watch a masterclass in standing up to the stumps. In an era where uncovered pitches were still a feature of first-class cricket, Knott's work keeping to the likes of Ray Illingworth, Jim Laker and 'deadly' Derek Underwood was something special. Think of a modern spin bowler bowling at T20 pace and throw some turn and uneven bounce in there for good measure, and you start to get the beginning of the inkling of the idea of the challenge those bowlers posed. Knott made it look easy. Effortlessly easy.

A legacy of tidiness with the gloves is particularly impressive in England, where conditions often result in the ball swinging prodigiously after pitching. Such conditions require different wicketkeeping techniques than other parts of the world. The catching position is central to the body. Length of catch is shorter and does not look nearly as impressive as the classic Australian long catch on the inside hip. But the English technique is prevalent there for a reason: it is necessary to adapt to movement after the ball passes the stumps, and to counter uneven bounce.

With wicketkeepers, perhaps more than any other cricketing discipline, statistics mean little. Or, perhaps more to the point, the statistics that we keep about keeping tell little of the story. Catches, stumpings, dismissals per innings, even byes are as much subject to the effort of the bowler as the wicketkeeper. Some wicketkeepers benefit from keeping behind a world-class bowling attack, others might benefit statistically while others suffer from the styles and quality of bowlers that they keep wicket to. To really separate the best-of-the-best, you need something more than the raw numbers.

Even in an age of advanced analytics, where new measures of batters’ control percentage or breakdown of length and line for a bowler, we have little to help us assess the success and quality of a wicketkeeper. Perhaps in time phrases like ‘gloved cleanly percentage’ and even more basic measures such as catch conversion percentage (an analysts’ way of saying ‘how many catches were dropped’) will become part of the cricketing lexicon. For now, we rely mainly on the eye test, and those basic, potentially flawed statistics.

Case and point: Allan Knott has 19 Test stumpings, which is impressive but ranks only fourth for English wicketkeepers behind Godfrey Evans (46!), Les Ames (23) and Dick Lilley (22). But those I have spoken to in the wicketkeeping fraternity rate Knott as the best English wicketkeeper to play the game.

That being said, at one time Knott held the record for most dismissals in Test cricket — his 219 passing fellow Englishman Godfrey Evans. It was, yep you guessed it, a stumping off that man Derek Underwood against the West Indies, which took him to the record. Grainy YouTube footage shows a jumble of bats and pads, ball ripping past bat — and bails off as quick as a flash. Stumpings like that live alongside diving catches down the legside as dismissals wicketkeepers dream of long after their playing days have ended. Perhaps none are better than the first one in this video.

Batting is important, too, even more so in the modern era where the role of the wicketkeeper has changed from an artisan whose value was primarily in their glovework to a batter who attacks from the lower order, bats with the tail, and must hold their own with batters and allrounders. It sometimes feels as if wicketkeeping skill is that is a ‘nice-to-have’, rather than a must-have skill. Without being unkind to some of the wicketkeepers on this list, their ranking in this Hall is largely due to their batting prowess.

With an average of 33.00, including five centuries, Alan Knott’s batting is almost underrated in the pantheon of Test wicketkeepers. Both his average and number of centuries compare very favourably with the likes of Ian Healy and Mark Boucher, among others.

The verdict

Forgive me wicketkeeping fraternity for not having more wicketkeepers in the Hall of Fame. In particular, I submit that analysis based purely on the eye test is in the too-hard-basket (for the first iteration of the Hall of Fame at least) for wicketkeepers in the pre-war and post-ware eras. When the Top Order Podcast becomes a commercial enterprise (or a publisher buys the rights to publish this as a book with a mind-bogglingly generous advance) I can dedicate the appropriate time to delve into the musty corners of the great library of cricket history books. Only then can I truly assess the quality of wicketkeepers in those eras.

Alan Knott is the first wicketkeeper to enter our Hall of Fame. From what I saw, he more than passes the eye test, and conversations with fellow wicketkeepers seem to back up my opinion that Alan Knott was one of the best pure wicketkeepers of his era, if not the best in his era. To me, it is fitting that a one-time record-holder for most dismissals, and a world-class behind-the-stumps artisan in the most trying of conditions is our benchmark for all glovemen.

In one word

Artisan

Bio

Record

Source: ESPN CricInfo

career peak

Sources: ESPN CricInfo, ESPN CricInfo