Bat and ball / Andrew Hughes / 06 August 2010 /

Pakistan were comprehensively beaten at Trent Bridge, but their efforts were not helped by another shocking performance from their experienced wicket-keeper. Andrew Hughes assesses the career of Kamran Akmal.

For the second time this year, Kamran Akmal has been dropped after a shoddy display of wicket-keeping. His failings in the First Test at Trent Bridge might not have affected the result as drastically as those at Sydney in the winter, but two fluffed catches and a missed stumping were generous gifts to bestow on a superior England team and Andrew Strauss's men took full advantage.

On the face of it, his Australian misadventures were more serious. In a nightmare match, Akmal dropped Michael Hussey three times off the bowling of Danish Kaneria, thus handing the series to the home side. He also dropped Peter Siddle and missed a straightforward stumping. It was so bad a performance that the ICC Anti-Corruption Unit had little choice but to investigate. Mercifully, they found nothing more than incompetence.

But in a way, his Nottingham debacle was worse. The winter tour was already a shambles by the time they got to Sydney. This time, a new young captain had just led an inexperienced team to a victory over Australia in his first match. It was vital that the senior players took on the responsibility of building on that early success. Instead, Pakistan's bowlers found their efforts largely unsupported by their wicketkeeper.

It remains to be seen though, how long he will remain in the wilderness. After being dropped for the final Test in Hobart last winter, he sat out the subsequent one day series and a couple of Twenty20 games in Dubai, but was back in the Pakistan squad for the World Twenty20 in May. Even now, there is clear reluctance from within the team to see him forced out.

This support for Akmal is rather strange. Though he can occasionally produce a destructive innings, he is probably the worst international wicket-keeper around at present. In twenty-eight Tests it is reckoned that he has missed thirty-four clear chances. Glovemen, like goalkeepers are judged, not by infrequent acts of brilliance, but by the rarity of their mistakes. By this standard, Akmal is a failure.

So why do Pakistan find it so hard to dispense with such an ordinary wicket-keeper? We have to assume that, aside from any personal qualities he might bring to the squad, the team management believe that he is worth his place as a batsman and that they can tolerate the odd fumble. His replacement in the winter, Sarfraz Ahmed was widely regarded as the best keeper in Pakistan, but despite acquitting himself well with the gloves, scored very few runs and was swiftly dispensed with.

Pakistan are not alone in favouring a batsman-keeper over a specialist, indeed, it has become the norm for international teams to demand that their wicket-keeper show some skill with the bat. But whereas the likes of Alec Stewart, Kumar Sangakkara and MS Dhoni worked hard to improve their keeping, Akmal it seems has gone backwards. This is partly down to him, but he has not been helped by the fact that Pakistan are the worst fielding side in the world and still do not have a specialist fielding coach, indeed, seem to have an old-fashioned disdain for the art of catching.

If you doubt this, you need only look at their efforts in the field on the first day of the Second Test. If they had worked on their fielding at all since Nottingham, it did not show, as four catches went down, including one from Akmal's replacement, Zulqarnain Haider. Their ineptitude in the field compounded some feeble batting and after just one day in Birmingham, they are already so far behind in the game that they are as high as [36.0] in the match winners market.

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