For the first time in over two years, Jonny Bairstow will be England’s Test wicketkeeper. Cameron Ponsonby takes a look at his career so far and what it may hold in the future.

Jonny Bairstow is a wonderful, exhilarating and thrilling cricketer. But, I have a confession.

Two years ago, as I sat with my friends at Lord’s watching Jonny Bairstow get his second duck of the match against Ireland, we laughed. And then when he was walking off someone called him “Jonny Pairstow” and we laughed some more.

Cut to two years later, and sat with the same friends in the same stand, we were now laughing at a video of Bairstow running. His arms are pumping, his legs are flying but his torso is remaining perfectly still. Test cricket’s very own Crash Bandicoot.

All in all I have, for the most part of my life, just found Jonny Bairstow, well, funny. A cricketer who spends half his time as a colossus of the game only to spend the rest of it as a cartoon.

He wears his heart on his sleeve, hits sixes for fun and any team in the world would rightly be desperate to have him in their ranks. But, he also just misses straight balls, which is really funny.

How can this be the same cricketer? How can the cricketer who scored back-to-back World Cup centuries against New Zealand and India be the same one who scored back-to-back ducks against Ireland less than a month later? How can the cricketer who has ascended to being worthy of consideration as England’s greatest ever white-ball batter, be the same one who averaged just six against balls on the stumps in Test cricket between June 2017 and August 2020?

I also get the impression (or, as much of an impression as you can make of someone you’ve never met) that this irks Bairstow. The fact that there are idiots like me out there, sitting behind a keyboard and spending more than half of my time laughing at the cartoon Bairstow rather than marvelling at the colossus. It’s unjust. I know it’s unjust. It’s just that, well, that just makes it funnier.

It’s not fair. And it’s contributed to a storyline around Bairstow’s career that he is a player desperate to prove anyone or anything wrong. It’s also led to one of my all time favourite lines of cricket writing by Vithushan Ehantharajah that Bairstow is, “the only person who needs to know there’s a monster under his bed before going to sleep.”

And so to his return to the Test side, and as of the upcoming Test match at The Oval, his return to the role of wicketkeeper. This match will be Bairstow’s 78th for England. It will see him exceed the number of caps Steve Smith has for Australia, and take him one behind Matt Prior’s tally for England.

As a comparison it shines a light on different players whose Test careers have been the same in quantity, but as of yet, not in quality. If Smith were to retire tomorrow his legacy would remain. Prior is remembered as one of England’s greatest wicketkeepers, the mongrel at the heart of a champion side. Whereas, if Jonny were to waltz off into the sunset tomorrow, how would he be remembered? Colossus or cartoon?

Realistically, it would be neither. A question mark remains over how Bairstow will be perceived as a Test cricketer when all the dust settles. We’d look back and say “what if”, as much as, “what a player.” It has been a quirk of this modern England side that we have three players in Bairstow, Moeen Ali and Jos Buttler who have seemed to be ever-presents over the last seven years whilst having never really settled either.

But for now, Bairstow has, for the first time in a while, a run of games ahead of him. He has a new technique which has seen him look stronger against the straighter delivery (or at least less likely to get bowled) and a return to the role of wicketkeeper that he sees as rightfully his.

To be the man in possession is nine tenths of the law and sees you on the correct side of what I’ve always called the 30-30 rule. It normally applies to club cricket, but in these desperate times we live in it can apply to the England Test side as well. If you score 30 every week and you’re in the team you’ll never get dropped, but if you score 30 every week and you’re out of the team, you’ll never get picked. And in his last six Test matches, Bairstow has had two innings of 28, three of 29, and one of 30. Perhaps taking the rule a touch too literally, but still.

Bairstow’s Test career has so far been a story of the feasts of 2016 and the famines of 2019. But his legacy could lie in becoming England’s man of moderation. A reliable figure judged not by the standards of others or the limits of his own talents, but by the demands of his current team.

And if he holds down that role for two years? Well, we’ll be talking about Bairstow as a cricketer with 100 Test caps. And that really would be a colossal achievement.