This weekend saw the opening round of the Bob Willis Trophy get underway as county cricket fans finally got their first taste of first-class action for the summer.
Here we take a look at six wicketkeepers uncapped at Test level that you should keep your eyes on over the coming weeks:
Ollie Robinson
845 first-class runs @ 31.22, 2 100s, 5 fifties
The 21-year-old wicketkeeper had a fine first full season in the County Championship in 2019, scoring 765 runs in 14 games, a tally that included a knock of 143 for Kent against Warwickshire at Edgbaston.
Robinson hit an unbeaten 103 against last year’s County Championship winners Essex in a warm-up game last week before following it up with 78 against the same opponents in the first innings of their Bob Willis Trophy clash against an attack boasting the likes of Jamie Porter, Sam Cook and Simon Harmer.
Alex Davies
3,841 first-class runs @ 34.60, 5 100s, 24 fifites
Batting at the top of the order in English conditions facing the red ball has become somewhat of an unenviable prospect for batsmen, which makes Davies’ record more impressive than what it appears.
After becoming the first Lancashire wicketkeeper to score 1,000 County Championship runs in a season in 2017, 25-year-old Davies will be looking to replicate the form that won by an England Lions later that year.
Jonathan Tattersall
1,046 first-class runs @ 31.69, 1 100, 5 fifties
The Yorkshire academy graduate made his first-class debut for the county in 2018 but had to wait until 2019 to register his best County Championship score in the competition, a match-winning 92 against Nottinghamshire at Scarborough.
Tattersall will be looking to continue his fine form from last summer where he scored precisely 1,000 runs across all three formats for Yorkshire.
Ben Brown
7,453 runs first-class runs @ 39.43, 18 100s, 40 fifties
A proper Sussex man – he has risen through the ranks from Sussex Under-11’s to becoming their club captain in 2017 – Brown’s record as a wicketkeeper-batsman is right up there with the very best in the country.
The 31-year-old has bags of experience and runs at this level and is showing no signs of slowing down with excellent returns of runs in both 2018 and 2019.
Adam Rossington
4,032 first-class runs @ 36, 7 100s, 28 fifties
Northants red-ball captain Rossington led from the front in his side’s promotion charge in 2019 as he finished the season as the club’s top run scorer in Division Two with 787 runs at an average over 45.
The 27-year-old has been a consistent performer for the club since signing from Middlesex and has already notched his first century of the Bob Willis Trophy in Northants’ clash with Warwickshire.
Jamie Smith
585 first-class runs @ 36.56, 1 100, 3 fifties
The 20-year-old is yet another exciting product of Surrey’s academy system and notched a century on his first-class debut in the Champion County match against the MCC in Dubai last year
With the possibility of Ben Foakes being released from the England bio-bubble to play for Surrey, the former England Under-19 international consolidated his spot in the Surrey XI with a battling 80 against Middlesex in his side’s opening Bob Willis Trophy clash.