England wicketkeeper Ben Foakes speaks to Wisden Cricket Monthly about his century on Test debut, but as editor-in-chief Phil Walker points out, his mighty rise has created a few problems.
Ben Foakes has mucked it all up. Just when England’s thinktank thought they’d finally cracked it – Buttler recalled, Bairstow keeping the mitts, that Curran boy running amok and Stokes back in at the gun spot at No.5 – a ‘wicketkeeper’ swings by, with faster hands than Dirty Harry and hair to die for, and throws it all off again.
Foakes exclusively told Wisden Cricket Monthly last month that he thought a debut in Sri Lanka was a zero chance. Even when Bairstow injured himself in a kickabout, he figured there was still Jos Buttler. “But then the day before the first Test, I saw Rooty walking around the ground telling those who weren’t playing – and I’d seen this happen in Australia on the Ashes, so I knew what it meant – and I turned to Sam [Curran] and said, ‘I think I’m playing here…’
“Then Joe came up to me and said, ‘I’m going to give you your debut’.”
Because if Bairstow does start to struggle, especially against the moving ball early on in his innings, then those five names will have to be rejigged yet again, and none of the permutations are particularly persuasive. There will be advocates for swapping Stokes and Bairstow. There will be renewed calls to force Root to bat at No.3, and there will probably be yet another conversation about moving Moeen Ali.
But none of the options are especially convincing. Bairstow, who a few months ago was keeping tidily enough and happily counterpunching at five or six, is now the incumbent at No.3 – it is his to make his own, or to lose. Because harsh though it may be, he won’t be keeping wicket for England any time soon.
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So what makes Ben Foakes so good? Bruce French first set eyes on him when he was a teenage star of England Under 19s. “You could already see he was going to be a talent,” he says. “So we selected him for the Lions, which was pretty controversial at the time, with him having not played many first-class games.”
He sees wicketkeeping as a match-turning position. “Growing up under Foster, I saw him do stuff that changed games. That’s always my goal. To do something that gets the team a wicket out of nowhere.”
Last summer, Foakes thought his chance had gone. He saw Buttler come back in, and shrugged that his time had probably passed. Now he lines up at Barbados for his second full series as England’s Test keeper, knowing the spot is his for the foreseeable. The keeper-artist is back, and he’s not about to drop it now.
