Matthew Wade’s struggles are keeping Peter Nevill in the frame for tour of India

AUSTRALIA’s selectors have done a fine job since the Hobart debacle but Matthew Wade’s presence remains a matter of intense debate.

Matthew Wade misses a catch off Sarfraz Ahmed late on Day 2. Picture: Peter Wallis

AUSTRALIA’s selectors have done a fine job since the Hobart debacle but Matthew Wade’s presence remains a matter of intense debate.

The team is winning and settled and it would make no sense to discard Wade for the final two Tests against Pakistan.

You can’t throw a man out for one missed stumping against Nathan Lyon on Friday night.

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But the issue is set to bubble along all summer as a significant number of fans and critics continue to raise the simple question of whether discarded Peter Nevill was the victim of rough justice.

Wade’s elevation was a call made in the middle of a crisis to add batting ballast to a ship which had sunk beneath the waves and was just about to thud on the ocean floor.

But the ship has been refloated and, in a strange sort of way, the better Australia performs the more sense it makes to recall Nevill.

Matthew Wade edges Mohammad Amir and is out for seven on Day 2.

A few weeks ago Australia needed a keeper who could score runs. Wade has failed twice with the bat but that is not the issue.

In a couple of months in India the priorities change because Australia must have one who can be fully trusted over the stumps to the slow men.

It’s a tricky one for the selectors because Wade was chosen by an upside down selection philosophy.

For more than a century the first thing mentioned about keepers in discussions over their selection was their keeping skills and Nevill, who has exceptionally soft and normally safe hands, is considered better in this area than Wade.

Peter Nevill in action for NSW against SA in the Sheffield Shield.

But glovework rated no higher than third in the Nevill-Wade equation behind batting ability and general on field grit and grunt such as the ability to lift his team and unsettle opponents with some lively verbals.

Nevill could barely be heard on stump mike encouraging the troops. Does it matter for a keeper to have a rousing on field presence.

Yes. In a struggling team, more so.

But when chances are missed behind the stumps we are reminded that Australia would swap a few “bowled Gazzas’’ for a routine stumping any day.

Originally published as Matthew Wade’s struggles are keeping Peter Nevill in the frame for tour of India