By Alison Mitchell and Jamie Lillywhite

If not Gilchrist, can Ambrose at least be as good as Stewart?

England have been searching for a reliable successor to Alec Stewart as wicket-keeper since the Surrey stalwart retired in 2003.

Trying to replace a man capable of scoring 15 Test centuries with an average of virtually 40 was never going to be easy.

And while Adam Gilchrist has plundered runs while keeping wicket effectively for Australia, the England selectors have sought someone to do something similar.

Tim Ambrose is about to become the fourth player to keep wicket for England since Stewart retired at the age of 40.

Chris Read, Geraint Jones and Matt Prior have all been tried, and discarded.

For many keepers, any sort of comparison with Gilchrist is a daunting one.

There is even an argument to suggest that such a search is fruitless, as Gilchrist possesses unique abilities.

However, Ambrose, born in New South Wales to an Australian father and English mother, sees nothing wrong with aiming high and prefers to regard Gilchrist as an inspiration rather than a millstone around the necks of young keepers.

The Warwickshire 25-year-old's selection for the New Zealand touring squad was accompanied by assurances from the then chairman of selectors, David Graveney, that he was "earmarked" to keep wicket in the Tests.

If the new one-day keeper, Phil Mustard, had scored a hundred and kept sharply throughout that series, it would have been very difficult to shunt him aside.

You get the feeling Ambrose will go about his business the way he plays Bob Dylan on his acoustic guitar Alison Mitchell Reply to Alison's latest blog

But he has continued to struggle with the bat in international cricket, and though both Ambrose and Mustard were picked for the opening warm-up game, Mustard remained at cover for most of the match, while the gloves stayed firmly with Ambrose.

He has kept tidily during the warm-up games, taking six catches, and looks to be a natural, balanced gloveman. With the bat he has produced scores of two, 12 and 33.

Ambrose only hit four first-class centuries in seven domestic seasons with Sussex, but he was a prolific batsman with Warwickshire in 2007, the high point being an unbeaten 251 against Worcestershire to boost his career average of 34.

He is not the cheerleader behind the stumps that Mustard - and to a greater extent Prior and Paul Nixon - have been.

Ambrose prefers to keep things simple in order to concentrate on his glovework, and in that way he is more in the mould of Read.

And though Read was thought of as too meek, you get the feeling Ambrose has his own methods, and will go about his business the way he plays Bob Dylan on his acoustic guitar, with quiet, self-assured confidence.

Nottinghamshire's Read was the first to be given a chance in the post-Stewart era, when selected for the three winter tours of 2003-04.

He survived the trips to Bangladesh and Sri Lanka, but before the end of the triumphant campaign in the West Indies, he was left out again.

Coach Duncan Fletcher believed that Kent gloveman Jones would offer the team greater value with the bat. Read, having done little wrong with the gloves, failed to score more than 20 with the bat.

He was left out until August 2006, but though he returned with a maiden half-century against Pakistan, it was clear that Fletcher never really rated him.

Jones (far right), an Ashes winner in 2005, has failed to last

And when the 2006-07 Ashes started, Jones was curiously again the man in possession - Read having to wait until the series was lost to get a chance.

Jones had his moments with the bat - scoring a century in his third Test and making 85 in the Test at Nottingham - but critics latched onto some horrendous errors with the gloves.

Anxious to silence them, he worked hard on his wicket-keeping, but eventual improvements in that discipline came at the detriment of his batting and he failed to make another hundred.

His 52 against India in Mohali in March 2006 proved to be the last of his six Test fifties and he was unable to pass 40 in his final nine Tests.

When Peter Moores was named as Fletcher's successor for the 2007 home series, he put his faith in Prior, his wicket-keeper when coach of Sussex.

Prior could scarcely have started better, with a century in his first Test at Lord's, but could not sustain the form.

Although he made successive fifties in Sri Lanka, the selectors opted for yet another change because Prior's glovework had fallen below the level required for Test cricket.