Ben Foakes is the right wicketkeeper for England - at the wrong time

In the 1930s, England plumped for Les Ames, who had a Test average of 40, as wicketkeeper. Others could bring more with the gloves, but no one could bring as much as a package. “At the time he was playing, it used to be said there were better wicket-keepers than Ames, and that he was in the England team because of his batting,” Wisden noted in Ames’s obituary.

And so for England, the dilemma about Ben Foakes is an eternal one. Can they accommodate their best wicketkeeper in the side?

Foakes’s keeping in the last two Tests in India has justified his reputation as one of the best wicketkeepers in the world. To see his dexterity completing stumpings has been to see the elevation of keeping from craft to art.

Yet for his prospects of holding onto his berth in the long-term, Foakes’s problem is that, in the last year, Jos Buttler has done the wicketkeeping job while being immune to the trade-off - between batting and keeping - that seems wired into the role. In his last seven Tests, Buttler averages 64.6 with the bat, a period that includes his rollicking 75 in the run chase against Pakistan, 152 against Pakistan in the final Test of the summer and a breezy 46* to turn England’s chase against Sri Lanka in Galle into a stroll.

Such a recent record makes it easy to advocate picking Buttler as a specialist batsman. Yet his own wicketkeeping, while not quite matching the sheer technical excellence of Foakes, has also been exemplary. His keeping over his three Tests in Sri Lanka and India was perhaps the best of his career. Go back to Foakes’s Test debut in 2018, and Buttler has taken 50 out of 54 catching chances in Tests. Remarkably, given all the fretting over the quality of Buttler’s qualities as keeper, that’s the highest success rate of anyone in the world.

Foakes’s record with stumpings — he has taken five out of seven stumping chances over his Test career, while Buttler has only taken one, earlier this year, out of six — highlights his own fine keeping. England’s spinners would far rather a stumping opportunity went to Foakes than Buttler. Yet the point remains: Buttler’s unobtrusive excellence behind the stumps in recent matches lessens the extra value that England would get from using Foakes as wicketkeeper in all climes.

As well as being a better batsman than Foakes, Buttler’s penchant for pyrotechnics is stylistically better-suited to an England side who can no longer rely on solidity from the lower order. Foakes the batsman is at his best when he can play normally - as he did alongside Sam Curran and Adil Rashid during his Test century in Sri Lanka in 2018. He is less well-suited to when the situation demands a different tempo. For all his resolve in lasting 86 balls on a treacherous wicket in the third Test, his two innings only yielded 20 runs. If England are to continue selecting a tail resembling a 1990s tribute act, that makes the need for a number seven comfortable as the aggressor all the greater.

For wicketkeepers, the importance of pure keeping ability, rather than batting, is tilted more in favour of keeping in Asia than anywhere else. “Standing up to the wicket is what keeping is all about,” Bob Taylor, who many hail as England’s finest pure keeper of the lot, told ESPNCricinfo in 2013. “That's where you can see a true wicketkeeper.”

The flip side of Taylor’s observation is that the glov work of keepers becomes a little less crucial when spinners don’t bowl as much. After Ahmedabad, England’s next 21 Tests are either at home, in Australia or in the West Indies - all places where the relative value of a keeper’s batting is more important than in India, and their value behind the stumps less important. Although Buttler may miss June’s series against New Zealand because of the Indian Premier League, exactly when Foakes will next appear in a Test again is unclear.

Aged 28, Foakes is not short of time to enjoy an extended stint as first choice. But for now, with Buttler’s keeping much-improved and a brittle lower-order creating extra need for a keeper with batting prowess, there is a suspicion that he might just be the right player at the wrong time. In Ahmedabad, on a spinning wicket that will allow Foakes to showcase his resplendent gifts with the gloves, all lovers of the art of wicketkeeping would be well-advised to enjoy him while they can.