Battle of the Keepers

Andrew McLean starts speculating on the make-up of a World XI to play Australia by looking at who might challenge for the keeper's spot. McLean sees it as a showdown between Kumar Sangakkara and Brendon McCullum.

There are plenty of other places to start speculating - who will open the bowling, who will open the batting - but wicket-keeper seems a nice, low-key place to start. It is a bit surprising to see that Brendon McCullum has managed to get into the reckoning so early into his career, but a review of the rest of the world shows that wicket-keepers are having a rough old time. Mark Boucher has been dumped from South Africa; Geraint Jones has been untidy; Kamran Akmal, Carlton Baugh and Dinesh Karthik are even newer to top-level cricket than McCullum; and on recent performances, players from Zimbabwe and Bangladesh should concentrate on drawing the odd match before they start thinking about World XIs. So based on form and recent results, McCullum is probably in with a good shot of selection if he can outplay Sangakkara over the Sri Lanka series.

The problem is of course that selection will probably hinge on more than just form and results. The matches are all about drawing an audience and that means ensuring that the largest (and richest) viewing populations are catered for. I suspect this will mean that the World XI will contain at least one player from every major cricketing nation and that those nations with the biggest television viewing populations will have more players selected than those without. Even if New Zealand ends the series as the number two ranked nation in the world, don't expect us to have more than one player in the side.