Ben Gardner reports from Barbados on Dan Lawrence’s opening day 91, an innings which helped give England the ascendancy in the second Test against West Indies.

Well, that was fun.

And that’s important, even if it didn’t end as it should have, because fun has been something missing from England’s Test travails for far too long, and for a time here, it was the same story. For the first half of the day, the party stand at the Kensington Oval had to dance to their own tune, as West Indies failed to make in-roads and Alex Lees struggled for timing. But Dan Lawrence instantly created his own rhythm, and with him he carried forward England and Joe Root, who had been becalmed up until that point. From Lees’ dismissal exactly halfway through the day to its end, the score more than trebled, and Lawrence was the beating heart of England’s effort.

He gave himself the luxury of 15 balls to get set, and by then he’d seen enough. Jason Holder, hitherto immaculate, with figures of 0-15 in 10 overs, saw his runs conceded increase by 50 percent in two blows, Lawrence straight driving with certainty and then flicking through midwicket with glee. The next boundary was a moment of easy brutality, skipping down and larruping Veerasammy Permaul for six, flamingoing as he went, and Lawrence and England were away. There were shots behind square, both lashed and dabbed, meaty pulls and deft, lapped ones too, making sure to clear backward square leg without overexerting. There were, as you’d expect, those leg-side whips, from further and further outside off as the day went on. There were moments of fortune too, with a drop at wide slip by Alzarri Joseph the most significant, but they felt free, tossed off, even if Jayden Seales, who had only one ball before thrown down the stumps in frustration, didn’t quite see it that way, yelling into his cap and then into the sky.

By the end he was toying with the West Indies attack, and it was this that brought his downfall. On 83 with four balls of the day left, you could see the cogs turning and the numbers crunching. Two more crisply-struck fours flowed off Holder. But that was the innings ending just as it begun, Lawrence chipping to cover, trying to hit the four that would allow him to bring up a century with a six on the last ball of the day.

Lawrence will have harder challenges to come of course, with the pitch flat and the West Indies attack flagging after a quick turnaround from Antigua, so it’s good that this didn’t look like particularly hard work. There will rightly be frustration at the climax. Would going to bed on 91 not out, with all the runs he wanted on offer the next day, really have been so bad? But in Lawrence’s frailty and folly lies his beauty, and the personality is half of the point. This was a talented young player realising he had a chance to enjoy himself and doing so. But while England fans will forgive him an indulgence, there was also a chance for something epic, something permanent to signify that he had arrived and wouldn’t be going anywhere soon. Maybe next time.

In any case, it’s tempting to look at what Lawrence is delivering now, with this innings following on from another tempo-setting knock at Antigua, and wonder why it has taken so long for him to get a proper go in what seems like his best position. Two promising matches at No.5 in Sri Lanka were rewarded with a rest and rotation-necessitated promotion to No.3, and he struggled. He was left out for the third Test, but impressed as a specialist No.7 in the fourth, with two box-clever innings on a raging turner, and by the start of the summer, with England’s IPL lot unavailable, he was at No.6, stranded on 81 not out in the second Test against New Zealand, when 19 runs more would have seen him established. Instead, he got one more game, with Moeen Ali’s recall seeing him moved aside again. Eight Tests split across three countries, four series and four positions, and still by the end of it he had as many half-centuries as anyone else for England in 2021.

And even if all of that is just about understandable, his continued Ashes sidelining only got stranger as the debacle deepened. England dropped Ollie Pope for a total of two Tests before recalling him, brain and feet still scrambled. By Hobart, the prospect of a call-up for Sam Robson, or anyone in the Big Bash, or anyone in Australia with a first-class cap and a passport seemed more likely than a game for Lawrence. Even before this series, even with Pope averaging 19 over 12 Tests, you still wondered if it might be Lawrence to sit out again, the Clapham golden boy given one more go over the Chingford tyro.

But really, it’s for the best. Lawrence may have missed out on the hundred, but there’s a place in the line-up to make his own. With that flashing blade, popping back leg and shoulders-up swagger, he can be the have-a-go face of England’s red-ball reset, free from being tarnished by association with the old set. That Ashes tour became a mire, swallowing and stultifying anyone who set foot in it, with even Root enduring a five-game slump into mediocrity, and Lawrence now feels like something different, something joyful. England’s No.4 might have been right in front of them all along.

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