Arthur Crabtree wrote:Six best batters, four best bowlers and an all rounder no good?
If Matt Prior was on his 2010-12 form, then thats fine. Your wicketkeeper is averaging mid 40's and is good enough to lock down the gloves, and can bat at 6 given the promotion, with your allrounder adding batting depth to the level of most keepers with 30 runs per innings at 7. It works because your allrounder is batting as most keepers, your keeper is batting as good as a specialist.
Currently we are facing the prospect of two replacement keepers, one a brilliant county batsman who has been technically destroyed with the bat and put down chances with the gloves, which he is not good enough to take, combined with a number 6 who is not good enough for a top side to bat there.
Even a top order of Amla/Kallis/Smith and De Villiers, South Africa were weary of the impact picking a specialist keeper would have when there was no standout candidate to bat at 6/7... they picked Duminy and De P and gave De Villiers the gloves, because they knew you couldnt combine a shaky 6 with a shaky 7.... even with a brilliant top 6.
England realistically are going to rebuild a batting unit around 3-4 new top order players, and when looking at what the newer batsman fresh out of county cricket have done recently, one also has to accept that we may face teams with a batting order that averages much lower....
With that in mind a non-specialist batsman in the top 6 positions becomes untenable unless he averages like on.... you simply have to put as many runs on the board as possible.