Remember when wicketkeepers were born, not made? We think we do, but we're probably wrong. Closer to the truth is that they've been made rather than born for a long time. And they should be unmade when the situation permits.
Quinton de Kock, for instance, has played 339 first-class, list A and T20 games - and has roamed free in the field in 50 of them. Heinrich Klaasen, too, hasn't been chained behind the stumps his whole career: he hasn't had to bother with gloves and pads while fielding in 21 of his 167 matches.
Both are classy batsmen, though different, and both deserve to play for SA. But in terms of conventional thinking there will be room for only one.
Grant Morgan, who opened the batting for SA Schools against Transvaal in December 1989 in a match in which Mark Johnston kept wicket and batted at No11, and conventional thinking don't get along.
WHY USE JUST ONE?
"You can't box wicketkeepers anymore; they must be considered multi-taskers - look at what Jonny Bairstow is doing," said Morgan, who was the designated keeper in 46 of his 52 first-class matches and all 40 of his list A games, most of them for Eastern Province and Northerns.
"It's a good time for SA wicketkeeping. Dane Vilas doesn't realise how brilliant he is. He was better than [Nic] Pothas with the gloves. Look at Rudi Second, he should be considered as a middle-order batsman."
Now the Dolphins' coach, when Morgan was up the road in Pietermaritzburg with KwaZulu-Natal inland, he would deploy two keepers in his T20 XI because "one was better keeping to the quicks and the other was better standing up for the spinners, and one of them was a good off-spinner".
Simple. Effective. Logical. And perhaps a blueprint for making the most of what the gifted De Kock and the grafting Klaasen offer SA.
"I've known both of them since they were little boys," Morgan said, alluding to the earlier days of his coaching career in Centurion.
Morgan remembers De Kock hammering quality senior attacks "at the age of 15-and-three-quarters".
But "Heinrich's journey has been different - he didn't have a golden thread like 'Quinny'". Few players do, and De Kock's reward was to be pushed to the front of the queue of stumpers vying for the one place available to them in SA's team.
His glovework, once rough, has improved immeasurably through hours of practice. If you turn up at a ground where SA are playing the next day and one player is still at it long after training has ended, that's De Kock.
Klaasen's progress was slower. "Heinrich got stuck in that big Titans system, behind people like Heino Kuhn and Mangaliso Mosehle," Morgan said. "I told him he needed to make sure he could be selected as something more than a wicketkeeper."
The advice must have stuck. Since his international debut last season Klaasen has proved himself one of the most innovative batsmen around, and his keeping is slickness itself. "Every game I play I need to do well," Klaasen said this week. "If I get three opportunities and I fail three times, that's my chance gone."
A touch of Klaasen, who once earned the backhanded compliment of being "the poor man's MS Dhoni" from a TV commentator, could go a long way in SA's World Cup bid.
"With AB's [de Villiers] exit and some uncertainty around, there could be a place for both of them," Morgan said.
Even Alan Knott, that wicketkeeper among wicketkeepers, wasn't behind the stumps for six of his 511 first-class games, and took two wickets bowling off-spin.
The second of those scalps belonged to Alan Butcher, who was out stumped. The wicketkeeper? Bob Woolmer. Go figure.
4 FAST FACTS
MULTI-TASKING
Heinrich Klaasen has already earned three caps for South Africa in games where Quinton de Kock has kept wicket.
FIRST-CLASS CAREER
In his 63 matches, Klaasen has scored 10 centuries and averages 45.28. He's also taken two wickets.
ODI CAREER
Klaasen has yet to make a half-century for South Africa, but he has thrice been in the 30s.
T20 CAREER
Klaasen's 30-ball 69 in Centurion in February, 54 of them in boundaries, earned South Africa victory over India...