No more kid-glove treatment for axed Bairstow

Ed Smith chose his words carefully as he explained his decision to leave out Jonny Bairstow from England’s squad for the Test tour of New Zealand. “Since returning to the gloves, he’s had a more difficult spell with the bat,” said England’s national selector, who revealed a 15-strong squad including four uncapped players, all aged between 21 and 24.

“The important thing to focus on is Jonny was picked for England in 2012 as the outstanding young batsman in England. He has a non-Test match first-class average of 50, which puts him alongside Joe Root – only Ollie Pope is above those two. And in the period of time that he’s been an England player, his non-Test match first-class average is 57. So that clearly shows his potential as a red-ball cricketer. I think there’s a real opportunity for him to reset and focus on how he can go about becoming that really top Test match player.”

[caption id=”attachment_122024″ align=”alignnone” width=”800″] Bairstow scored an impassioned hundred in Colombo last year[/caption]

While Smith insisted he didn’t want to “narrow [Bairstow’s] options”, it’s fairly clear that ‘reset’ means ‘forget about keeping wicket’. Bairstow will be livid, but it could be the making of him as a Test cricketer.

“It’s embedded in my DNA, I’m afraid,” Bairstow said of wicketkeeping earlier this year, soon after having the gloves restored to him in the Caribbean following Ben Foakes’ short-lived stint behind the stumps.

Foakes – who had initially stepped in following an ankle injury to Bairstow and was named Player of the Series in Sri Lanka – kept wicket for five Tests, during which time Bairstow returned to the side as a specialist No.3 and scored a brilliant, impassioned hundred in Colombo.

However, three matches later, for the third Test in St Lucia, Foakes was jettisoned and Bairstow returned as keeper – a switch which was rumoured to come as a surprise to Smith, who had already flown home. The loudest voice appeared to have won the argument.

Bairstow evidently has an emotional attachment to keeping wicket, a role his father David filled with distinction for Yorkshire and, for a time, England. But there is also a sense that it has come to serve as a safety blanket for him, lessening the scrutiny on his batting, which, in Test cricket, has been consistently underwhelming for the best part of three years.

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On that same tour of the Caribbean, Bairstow made a revealing comment about struggling to readjust his mindset to that of a specialist batsman. “I had to re-evaluate, change my mental state and think about a lot of other things. If you play a s**t shot, you don’t have keeping to take your mind off it. If you drop a catch, you have your batting to fall back on.”

Smith might argue it’s time for Bairstow to stop taking his mind off those “s**t shots”.

As a keeper, Bairstow has made significant improvements. Until the start of 2018, CricViz calculated Bairstow’s ‘average fielding ability per match, based on the probability of success’ at -3.87 – the worst of any Test keeper with more than 20 catches during that period. However, since then that has risen to 2.56, a figure bettered by only New Zealand’s BJ Watling and Pakistan’s Sarfaraz Ahmed.

But his poor form with the bat couldn’t continue to be ignored. At a time when he should be somewhere near his peak, the 29-year-old has scored one century in his last 17 Tests (when, as mentioned, he wasn’t keeping wicket) and he averages 24.23 in that time. In 2019 that average drops to 20.25. This from a player who in 2016 averaged 58.80 and scored 1,470 runs – a tally bettered by only 13 players in a calendar year in the history of Test cricket.

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Bairstow would point out that he had the gloves throughout that golden period, but given the three centuries he hit that year all came in the first innings of a match (as all six of his Tests hundreds have) whether he was keeping wicket or not is really a moot point.

There is no doubt he has the quality to be a high-quality middle-order batsman in Test cricket but at the moment he is not performing close to that level.

Most concerning is the manner of his dismissals. In 69 Tests, Bairstow has been clean bowled on 32 occasions. To put that in context, only four players in the history of the game have been bowled as many times in fewer matches. And it’s a problem which is getting worse. Since his recall for the 2015 Ashes, Bairstow has been bowled on 26 occasions in 55 matches. The next closest in the same period is Roston Chase, with 18. Bairstow has had his stumps rearranged five times in 2019 alone.

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It’s pace bowling which has consistently proved his undoing in the last three years. Having been dismissed once every 229 deliveries while playing a defensive shot against pace prior to the start of 2017, that figure falls to a dismissal every 30 deliveries in the period since. His average against inswing since the start of 2017 is just 19.26, having been 41.72 prior to that.

Given how longstanding these problems are, it seems reasonable to ask what England’s coaching staff have been doing about it. “If a player’s got a deficiency, as we all do, why the hands off approach?” said Michael Carberry of the England coaching set-up recently. “Actually get in there and coach them, guide them. That’s what coaches are there for, surely?”

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Unless, of course, Bairstow’s too stubborn to accept there’s a problem. Either way, something has gone wrong and needs to be fixed.

Whether Jos Buttler is the long-term solution as keeper is debatable. Smith says “Jos is good to go” but it’s asking a lot of a player who will have his hands full as captain of England’s white-ball sides in the not too distant future, and there is surely a risk that keeping wicket will come to hamper his batting in the way that it has done with Bairstow. If Foakes – who Smith revealed is on standby for the New Zealand tour – can rediscover his form with the bat, he may be the better bet in the long run.

Bairstow’s Test career is by no means over but if he is to be part of this “new cycle”, as Smith describes it, with a new coach imminent, then he needs to be willing to push that reset button.

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As a one-day cricketer Bairstow is already a world champion, a trailblazer for a new era of white-ball batting, one of the very best in his field. As a Test cricketer, it’s still all up for grabs.

The best years of Jonny Bairstow the Test batsman could yet be ahead of him. Let’s hope he doesn’t waste them worrying about who’s wearing the gloves.

Jo Harman is magazine editor of Wisden Cricket Monthly