KEY POINTS:
England's search for a top-class test wicketkeeper will take a new twist next month.
They have brought two glovemen on the New Zealand tour, neither of whom has played a test, which sounds like the selectors have put a dollar each way.
It's almost reached "Roll up, roll
up for the great England wicketkeeping hunt" proportions. How they must fondly recall the days of the mercurial Alan Knott, the impeccable Bob Taylor or the dependable Alec Stewart.
Phil Mustard has played five ODIs, filling in for the now discarded Matt Prior in Sri Lanka late last year.
He played both Twenty20 games this week and the five-game ODI series starting in Wellington tomorrow is next on his list.
Tim Ambrose is set to twiddle his thumbs until the three-test rubber starts in Hamilton on March 5.
Both are 25 and are the latest to be tried out by England's selectors, following Geraint Jones, James Foster, Chris Read and Prior as the near decade-long search for a long- term successor to Stewart continues.
England must look around the globe and wonder where they've gone wrong. By comparison, New Zealand have Brendon McCullum, South Africa Mark Boucher, Indian Mahendra Singh Dhoni, and Australia of course the brilliant Adam Gilchrist, all of whom have become quality fixtures in their national side.
Ambrose, born north of Newcastle - as in New South Wales, not northern England - is one of the few players to be told weeks in advance that's he's got a test debut coming up.
That came when England's test and ODI parties for New Zealand were announced. There was a rider, however, that should Mustard prove to be hot stuff in the short games he might carry on into the tests.
Either way, Ambrose, who kept wicket for New South Wales from under-13 to under-17 before figuring England held more prospect for advancement than Australia, has at least three weeks to wait - barring a Mustard mishap - before his first England appearance.
Sunderland-born Mustard, nicknamed Colonel, has other plans, which include test cricket. It's starting to look like a game of Cluedo, too, as England try to find a reliable keeper who can make runs at No 7.
Stewart, by a mile the best batsmen of the recent keepers, averaged 39.54 in 133 tests. Prior, who hit a century on debut last year, averaged 40.14 in his 10 tests but couldn't catch a cold in Sri Lanka, and has been dumped.
Jones, who played 36 tests, was a favourite of former coach Duncan Fletcher. He hit a century against New Zealand in 2004 but for much of his career was a hopeless catcher.
Read was rated the best of the bunch in wicketkeeping terms, but didn't get enough runs, and in any case has played in the rebel Indian Cricket League, placing him in the same boat as the six New Zealanders to have done so, ie not banned, but others will be picked ahead of him.
The suspicion seems to be that while lefthander Mustard is your man for a rapid 40, Ambrose, who hit an unbeaten 251 for Warwickshire against Worcestershire last year, is a better bet for a more measured 70 plus in a test. His first-class average is 34.9; Mustard's is 27.36.
But Mustard, a talented teenage footballer who spent time at Manchester United and Middlesbrough's academies before focusing on cricket, has first dibs and isn't about to waste the chance.
"Test cricket is my No 1 priority. Obviously we've got the Twenty20s and one-dayers coming up. I'll take every game as it goes, and hopefully then into the test series," Mustard, a former under-19 international, said.
Mustard, who spent four summers playing club cricket in Melbourne and Hobart, caught the eye of Australian great Shane Warne last year, who suggested there were touches of Gilchrist about his work.
High praise indeed and Mustard has shown himself a dasher at the top of the order and is in New Zealand on the back of a fine season for Durham.
The trick will be proving he can do a job in the test side as well - if he gets the chance.
There is a curious aspect to Ambrose's rise. He was at Sussex with Prior, under new England coach Peter Moores, early in the decade.
Figuring he wouldn't get past Prior, he moved to Warwickshire. Now he's got Prior's England spot.
Getting it is one thing and whether his name is inked or merely pencilled in for England is up to him.
