Prior, buzzing hub of England’s most successful Test side

By Mike Selvey, The Guardian/LondonThe wicketkeeper is the focal point, the beating heart, of any cricket team. Bowlers bowl through to them, fielders return the ball to them. They are the unflagging lifters of spirits when the going gets tough, the cajolers, the user of stick or carrot, the irritants of batsmen. They see the angles for fielders, spot bowling flaws, suggest tactics from their vantage point, and nowadays are the first port of call for a review of a decision. These are good lieutenants. It is a job from which there is no respite.For eight summers, from his 2007 century-making debut against West Indies at Lord’s to his final match against India last summer, at Lord’s once again, Matt Prior provided the buzzing hub of the most successful of all England sides. Three times he was an Ashes winner, home and away. It was Prior who was behind the stumps when England beat India away for the first time in getting on for four decades.Until he was cut down by the achilles injury that ultimately has led to his retirement, this was one of the most significant cricketers ever to pull on the crown and three lions, an influence that was instrumental in his retention, ill-advised as it was in the opinions of many at the time, at a stage when his heir apparent, Jos Buttler, was already making his mark on the international scene. But that is the value that was placed on him. “Immense” was one adjective, used by Andrew Strauss, who stood at first slip alongside him as the team played their way to the No1 Test match ranking and who is someone not readily prone to hyperbole.The bare statistics of his Test match career (he never quite came to terms with white-ball international cricket, which, for a player of such positive instinct, remains something of a mystery) tell of a prolific keeper and batsman. In 79 Tests he claimed 256 victims, only 13 behind the wicketkeeping genius that was Alan Knott, who nonetheless played 16 more matches for England. Both Knott and Alec Stewart, as keeper, scored more runs – 4,389 and 4,540 respectively – than his 4,099, but neither came close to matching his average of 40.18, a figure exceeded for England only by Les Ames, 2,387 runs at 43.4.In global terms, others, in addition – Adam Gilchrist, Mark Boucher, MS Dhoni, Andy Flower and Brad Haddin – have scored more runs, and as well as Ames, Gilchrist, Flower, AB de Villiers, BJ Watling, and Kumar Sangakkara (marginally) have better averages of those who have played a meaningful number of games behind the stumps. Only Gilchrist (17), Flower (12) and Ames, with eight centuries, can better Prior’s seven hundreds.We remember Prior best as a counterpuncher, a bristler strutting eagerly to the crease at No7, who could biff his side out of trouble, or capitalise on a solid base to take the game out of reach of the opposition in a single devastating session. Right from his first innings, he pulled willingly and witheringly, drove venomously through the off side and cut and carved ferociously.There was another side however exemplified by the last of his Test centuries, an epic unbeaten 110-run rearguard innings at Eden Park in Auckland that marshalled the tail so skilfully that it saved the match for his side, and prevented a series win for the Kiwis. It was an innings that seemed to drain the life from him, for he made a pair in his next match, and in a further 24 innings, only twice reached a half century.His keeping, certainly in the early years, was cumbersome – hamfisted even – the work of a stopper rather than a glovework artist. At The Oval in 2008 he let through 33 byes in the first Indian innings, while in Trinidad, the following winter it was a world record 52 byes in the match, figures that no team can sustain. The campaign for real keepers was in full voice.His response was to work with Bruce French, who countenanced greater mobility rather than better glovework as a remedy. So Prior trained even harder, but rather than bulk up, he slimmed down. At his peak he had been transformed in the same way as had Stewart, and so in the fullness of time will Buttler. No England cricketer of his time strove harder for improvement.