Batty mad about Surrey

Jon Batty has been the Surrey first-team keeper for ten years

Surrey wicket-keeper Jon Batty lived in the shadow of Alec Stewart during the early part of his career at Surrey, but has since made the position behind the stumps his own.

The 33-year-old has been at the club since 1997, when he was thought to be the third-string keeper behind Stewart and Graham Kersey, who was later killed in a car crash.

But England duties for Stewart meant that Batty was promoted to the first team and he has subsequently never been dropped or missed a game through injury.

“It’s just luck,” he told ecb.co.uk. “I work on my fitness and keepers tend to play with a few niggles and a few injuries, more than most anyway. It’s just part of the game.

“You are rarely going to be 100 per cent fit, but you just learn what you can play with and what you can’t and get on with it.”

Batty is a man who likes to keep busy, as a hectic winter schedule suggests.

“I’ve had quite an exciting winter,” he said. “I started training again at the end of October and I did some writing and a few podcasts.

“After Christmas I went to Dubai for a week with the Lord’s Taverners and did some fundraising with them.

Batty shows off his ability to score runs in the LV County Championship © Getty Images

“I then carried on and went to Perth for six weeks and played some grade cricket and did some training. I hooked up with one of my old coaches, Peter Carlstein, who used to train the Hollioake boys, Ian Ward, myself and a few of the Surrey boys.

“I went back to what I used to do, a bit of old-school training and then reported back here (the Brit Oval) on March 1 fighting fit and raring to go.”

For most cricketers, the winter off-season is seen as a chance to recharge their batteries, with some light training to stay fit, but it is a testament to Batty’s enthusiasm and love of hard work that he sees it as an opportunity to learn and keep improving.

Surrey went to India on a pre-season tour, which Batty thought was an extremely useful experience, despite suffering on his return.

“Mumbai is a great place facility-wise,” he said. “Unfortunately I went down with Delhi belly when I got back and ended up not eating for eight days, but from a cricket perspective it went okay.

“The whole facility is brilliant for batting, keeping and bowling.

“It was a challenge, but the wickets were relatively English-like to begin with - green seamers. It is good to test yourself when it is swinging around and in those conditions.

"Seamers tend to be relatively similar to keep to standing back," he added.

Batty likes to stand up to the spinners in his keeping duties at Surrey © Getty Images

"Spinners are quite different but I've kept to Nayan (Doshi) for the best part of three seasons, (Ian) Salisbury for 11 years.

"You do enough at training, and then batting against them in the nets you get to see what they're about so that gives you an advantage as well.

“We worked very hard on our fitness from March 1 and then stepped it up and it just rounds it up all nicely for our first game here.”

Batty has been moved up and down the batting order in recent years, with the pressures of captaincy in 2004 combined with keeping wicket and opening the batting deemed too much for him. But it is the new ball that he prefers to face.

“In four-day cricket I love opening. I love opening, full stop, and I have done since I was a young kid,” he admitted.

“I think there is more of a role for me to play down the order in one-day cricket to give a little bit of stability.

“But wherever the team needs me to bat for the balance of the side, I’m happy.”

One-day cricket is an area in which Surrey know they need to improve, with Batty saying: “Last year in the Pro40 for the most part we were very good and then we fell away in the last two games which cost us promotion.

“I think consistency will be the main thing and is a problem. When Surrey are hot, they’re hot and when we’re not we tend to be at the opposite end of the scale.

“We need to find our middle ground and then have that for most of the season and then we’ll have our very good days. It is just cutting out those poor days, really.

“There is no reason why we shouldn’t be a very good one-day side.”