Jonny Bairstow risking HIS WHOLE PRECIOUS GODDAMN LIFE by kicking a football (via YouTube)
Tag: Jonny Bairstow (page 1 of 2)
Jonny Bairstow’s been one of England’s few semi-competent batsmen in recent times. This has given rise to the very obvious conclusion that England’s batting woes are pretty much entirely down to him because if he wasn’t keeping wicket he’d be making even more runs.
Would Bairstow make more runs if he didn’t have to keep wicket?
Ali Martin points out that all five of Bairstow’s Test centuries have come in the first innings when England have batted first – so basically pre-squatting-and-catching.
For his part, Bairstow says that he’s batted better since he became keeper (he averages 29 without the gloves and 42 with them). He also made most of his billions of runs for Yorkshire while he was their wicketkeeper.
We have no idea what all of this means, but if any England player’s averaging 42 at the minute, that strikes us as being a massive win and maybe not an area that needs to be messed around with too much.
Who would keep wicket instead?
Jos Buttler is the obvious answer because he keeps wicket for the one-day sides. However, Buttler averages 30 when he keeps in Test cricket and 44 when he doesn’t. This feels like little more than displacement, like we’d still be having an ‘X should be freed from the gloves’ debate even once the change had been made.
Ben Foakes could also play. Pretty much everyone’s up for this on the basis of the Stokes, Foakes, Woakes thing. He can also bat and most of the Test batsmen can’t, so it’s hard to see how this would weaken the side.
So should Jonny Bairstow be freed from the wicketkeeping gloves?
If he’s got a broken finger, yes. If his fingers are intact, no, probably not.
Our reasoning runs like this: Jonny Bairstow’s not really dropped the ball very much in recent times and it really isn’t that unheard of for England to have a wicketkeeper who drops the ball fairly often.
We greatly value wicketkeepers who don’t (literally) drop the ball.
Jonny Bairstow press conference (screengrab from ESPNCricinfo video)
You can fight hard for a couple of innings, but when all seems lost it can become really hard to summon the enthusiasm and make any real effort. You can’t judge people too harshly on what happens in these circumstances.
You might consider that a comment on England’s later efforts in this match, but it’s actually our way of saying that after several nights of trying to watch live coverage, we didn’t bother denying ourself any sleep for day five.
After all, there were already enough things eating into our eyes-closed downtime: a baby, a cough, someone else’s cough and, most significantly for the purposes of today’s article, the cat.
Monty’s idea of a friendly greeting is a headbutt. It is a friendly act, even if he does for some reason think that 4am is the optimal time to express his feelings. He does it to deposit facial pheromones on us and so reaffirm that we’re part of the Monty Gang.
And so to Jonny Bairstow.
According to Cameron Bancroft, “he says hello to people very differently from most others.”
Apparently he does it with a headbutt. “There was nothing malicious about his actions,” added Bancroft. “He didn’t knock me over. I’ve actually got the heaviest head in the West Australian squad, it’s been measured. There’s an actual measurement for it.”
It seems clear that Bairstow was essentially ‘claiming’ Bancroft using his special smell. It’s worth noting that he caught the opener in the first innings, but couldn’t dismiss him in the second. Something had changed.
Pheromones don’t last forever. They need refreshing. If Bancroft gets a 4am knock on his hotel door, he knows what to expect.
About a year ago, we started getting milk delivered – you know, like how people used to back in the Eighties. No longer do we have to carry weighty flagons of milk in amongst the rest of the big shop; now it just materialises on our doorstep, as if by magic.
Milk usage is a hard thing to predict. It wasn’t something we were especially aware of back when we had one giant milk throughout the week, but now we occasionally find ourself lining up a trio of bottles or more in our fridge door. At this point, milk consumption suddenly seems a pressing issue.
Being pathologically disinclined towards ‘sinful waste’ our only course of action when this happens is to drink shitloads of milk. We wonder whether Jonny Bairstow might be about to do the Test hundred scoring equivalent because it rather seems like he might have a few backed up.
It’s reassuring when less established England batsmen start showing signs of being untroubled by county cricket. It makes you think that maybe they do stand a chance of doing well in Tests.
Last year, Jonny Bairstow made five County Championship hundreds for Yorkshire, including an unbeaten double. This year, he made 246 against Hampshire and 198 against Surrey.
He also hit this six, which we still can’t get our head around.
Throw in a first Test hundred against South Africa during the winter and it seems likely that good form has become sufficiently prolonged as to be considered ‘class’.
Against this backdrop, it didn’t seem at all surprising that Bairstow should cruise to 140 against Sri Lanka today. Hopefully he still has a whole bunch of three figure scores just chilling in his fridge door, waiting to be extracted.
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Features
- Danish Kaneria or Dane Vilas – who is most Danish?
- The worst Test bowling averages of all time
- The Awkwardest Squad: Why the 96/97 “flippin’ murdered ’em” tour of Zimbabwe was peak 90s England (a net bowler’s story)
- Which Test nation’s top five wicket takers would form the most balanced attack?
- England’s four weirdest Test picks of the last 20 years
Photographs on this site by Sarah Ansell
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