Technical tweak hands Carey a batting breakthrough

A small but significant tweak to his batting stance has ensured Alex Carey enters the coming Border-Gavaskar Trophy Series as the best-performed red-ball batter in Australia, and in the "form of his life" according to one well-placed judge.

The assessment was made by Carey's close friend and Test teammate Travis Head who has played with the wicketkeeper-batter for Australia and South Australia over the past decade.

It is backed up by raw statistics from the summer's first four rounds of Sheffield Shield matches which show Carey as leading runs scorer with 452 at an average of 90.4 (including two centuries) despite playing one less game than second-placed Hilton Cartwright.

The secret to Carey's sublime start to the season in his auxiliary skills-set – his 15 catches and two stumpings also has him atop the Shield keeper's list for average dismissals per innings – is attributed to two factors.

The first is a prolonged break from competitive cricket over the winter months, the first such hiatus the 33-year-old has enjoyed since breaking into international cricket in the white-ball formats in 2018.

The other is the technical modification he's implemented to pick up his bat slightly higher upon bowler's release, a method he's found affords him more time in his strokeplay and helps with both power and placement.

"It's only slight, but at the moment, it feels like I'm in a good position and reacting pretty well to the ball," Carey explained after Australia's first team training session ahead of the opening NRMA Insurance Test against India starting at Perth Stadium on Friday.

"You play and play and play, you don't really get a chance to work on too many things.

"Not having games coming up for a while, I've just mucked around a little bit with my hands and found something that felt good and sort of ran with that.

"I just got my hands up a little bit higher, the bat up to the sky and from there just try to react.

"It did feel good pretty much straight away, so didn't have to search too much."

Carey admits the additional reaction time the change has granted him means he's not so inclined to implement pre-meditated strokes that occasionally came to characterise his batting.

That was the case in the first innings of Australia's most recent Test outing, against New Zealand in Christchurch, when Carey fell to a pre-planned sweep shot against the first ball sent down by spinner Glenn Phillips, which yielded a looping catch to mid-wicket.

But in the second innings of that match, with Australia reeling at 5-80 chasing a distant 279 for victory, Carey carried his team to victory with an unbeaten 98 that proved the catalyst for his batting renaissance.

Since that player-of-the-match performance at Hagley Oval, the left-hander produced scores of 74, 77no and 13 on being recalled to Australia's ODI outfit for this year's UK tour, and 6, 36 and 75 in the domestic one-day competition in addition to his Shield bounty.

It means he enters the upcoming five-Test series against India with the most compelling form of any batter in Australia's top seven, and praise from his longtime teammate and great mate.

"It's the best form he's been in," Head said in Perth yesterday.

"For him, it's trying not to overplay it and not worry about too much. 

"I know he's not. 

"I think he's in a great space, has been for a while and now it's starting to click for him. 

"And once you sort of capture that form, you want to try to continue it on again. 

"You're never guaranteed that happens, but I think he's going to play a huge role in his position and in this team."

The irony for Carey is the only other batter who can boast both a superior Shield average (99) and the same number of centuries this summer (two) is also a rival for the sole Test keeping berth, Josh Inglis.

And while Inglis will join the Australia Test squad in Perth later this week having captained his country to a T20I series clean sweep over Pakistan, the national selectors have reiterated he has been named solely on the strength of his batting.

Should Carey complete a match aggregate of 113 runs or more (assuming he is dismissed in both innings) of the first Test, he will claim the second-highest batting average among Australia keepers (33) behind the freakish Adam Gilchrist (47.6).

He also currently sits in second place among all Australia glovemen (to have kept wicket in five or more Tests) for average number of dismissals per innings, with his current 2.22 bettered only by immediate predecessor Tim Paine (2.31).

Given Carey equalled the Australia record for the most dismissals (shared with Gilchrist's 10) in that Christchurch Test earlier this year, adding to the 25 he completed across five Test during the home summer, he is also poised to overtake Paine on the all-time list of most successful Australia keepers.

And yet the presence of Inglis in the 13-man squad for the opening Test seems set to ensure he remains under scrutiny, even if he feels no immediate rivalry from his fellow keeper.

"I understand it's a unique position to be in," Carey said. 

"There's one wicketkeeper in a team, and there's lots of quality around the country who are trying to get that spot, and I was one of those players one day.

"The keeper's club is normally pretty small, to have one more in there (Test squad) is great.

"We've spent lots of time Josh and I, all the way back from the NPS (National Performance Squad) days and spent lots of time on tour together.

"He'll join the squad, with lots of energy (and) batting beautifully as well.

"He's a mate so that's always a good thing."