“I would rather have a guy who can play the shots and teach him the defence than a guy who doesn’t have any shots” – Viv Richards, 2015

Across a substantial career a batting average is an effective measure of a batsman in Test cricket. But across a handful of matches – although it remains illustrative of quality – we can be less sure of its results. Shimron Hetmyer has a Test batting average of 29.70 (and a first-class average of 33.87) but to anyone who has watched him bat he is a clearly a very special talent with the potential to average significantly more by the end of his career.

Hetmyer is one of those rare and precious players whose talents are seemingly impossibly self-evident. This is accentuated by his image. Hetmyer has that classical Caribbean swagger and the ineffable aura of a man for whom operating at an elite level appears to be almost effortless. Batting with a gold cricket-bat chain round his neck, hatless or – like Desmond Haynes – in a floppy sunhat, Hetmyer has suddenly become the coolest man in cricket. But there is substance to match the style.

Traditionally the foundation of Test batting is said to be a solid defence, but as attacking batting – elevated and heightened by the T20 age – becomes more powerful and more reliable, Test cricket may find more players come at it from the other direction. Sehwag and David Warner were two early iconoclasts of the traditional approach and now with the likes of Hetmyer and also the similarly freakish Rishabh Pant bringing their aggressive methods to Test cricket we might be on the cusp of a coterie of players who turn Test batting on its head.

A sound defence may still be needed at Test level but here too Hetmyer appears to at least have a strong foundation. His average of 69 defensive shots per dismissal is slightly below the global average of 71 but only marginally.

Such is the strength of Hetmyer’s attacking game that his challenge will not be scoring runs but choosing when to score them. At the age of 22 that is not a bad problem to have.