@MN5 said in West Indies tour of NZ:
If I was doing a less than expert ranking of NZ keepers it would be something like.......
Watling
McCullum
Smith
Blundell
Parore
First two should be self explanatory, I remember Smithy being sensational in partnership with Hadlee although being very hit or miss with his batting ( as guys were in his era ) he may have been a better keeper than one and two......
Blundell despite his woes still did a good job overall even if Hay looks a superior replacement and Parore was a classy keeper and lovely looking batsman ( record doesn't really indicate it )
Apparently Wadsworth was very good but I'm too young to have seen him play.
Would any others warrant a mention ?
Only other NZ keeper on the linked list is Warren Lees who was also reasonable (Smith's predecessor). Smith was the best keeper I've seen play on the keeping side, but I also don't think there's enough in it to be worth selecting him in test cricket over Watling or McCullum so I agree with your order of 1-3 as a list of keepers without any thought as to team balance - I would put Parore above Blundell though. It's easy to forget how good a keeper Parore actually was, but he comes up on a lot of the all time stat lists and often near the top. On Parore's batting, he played as a specialist batter for a bit while we experimented with Lee Germon as specialist captain and keeper for anyone who remembers those particularly dark days of the 90s... Had he applied himself better at not getting out, he could well have been our best ever instead of debating whether he's 4th or 5th on our all time list.
Having said that, in an all time side, Hadlee, C Cairns and Vettori would be reasonable all rounders so needing Watling for his batting would be slightly less important unless specifically selecting a grinder at 6 or 7. Smith usually batted 8 or 9 and had a very high SR as he was a dasher rather than a grinder so would probably fit right into modern ODI/T20s in the later middle order or pinch hitter (he still has the world record for highest score at 9).
https://www.reddit.com/r/Cricket/comments/4xdsev/stats_looking_at_test_wicketkeepers/ - always dangerous looking at Reddit posts, but on the topic of byes, IDS Smith was the third lowest Byes per Innings on the list (scraped from match cards apparently so no Statsguru link available), which backs up him being the best NZ keeper ever on the keeping side of the ledger. Interestingly, Parore and McCullum were both better than Watling on that measure, but Watling also hadn't finished playing yet so may have improved since the work was done.
