More runs for Bairstow
Batsman punishes Sri Lanka after early let-off by Eranga
‘EVERYONE drops catches. It’s the nature of cricket, the way things go.” So said Jonny Bairstow in the afterglow of his unbeaten century last night, referring to Shaminda Eranga’s shocking spill which had given him a life in the infancy of his knock.
Well, they certainly do. Bairstow himself, the star of the England innings with his undefeated 167 out of his side’s 416, was at it on the second day of the third Test at Lord’s as Sri Lanka fought back to reach stumps at 162-1.
The England wicketkeeper is seeing the ball like a melon with bat in hand but like a pea as soon as the gloves are donned, and he shelled a sitter from Chris Woakes’s first delivery of the Sri Lanka reply in mid-afternoon when Dimuth Karunaratne nicked one. It was as easy as they come. Eranga might even have taken it.
Karunaratne was on 28 and made 50 before Steven Finn strangled him down the leg side in the evening session, Bairstow this time pouching the ball.
The keeper had punished Eranga to the tune of 156 runs, so 22 is small change.
Bairstow has form, too, which is perhaps why he got irritable before the Durham Test last month, when he was asked if he was happy keeping wicket. He went on to have a messy time behind the pegs, and not for the first time.
At Centurion against South Africa earlier this year he dropped Hashim Amla on 5 (he made 109) and Stephen Cook on 47 (he made 115) in a match that England would lose, albeit a dead rubber.
Trevor Bayliss admitted that Bairstow was “a work in progress” then but there remain yards to be put in.
Unless he passes the mitts to Jos Buttler for the Pakistan series, bumps up the order and squeezes the out-of-nick Nick Compton into the wilderness.
Sri Lanka’s fightback in the second half of the second day was impressive but showed the docile nature of the pitch – on which England should never have been 84- 4.
The diminutive Kaushal Silva went to bed on 79 not out and he batted brilliantly.
Karunaratne looked good too and he and Silva took 23 off the first three overs as James Anderson and Stuart Broad failed to find conditions as conducive as they had been in Leeds and Durham. When Karunaratne fell, Kusal Menis joined the fun, reaching 25 by the close.
Woakes was the best England bowler, hitting the lifeless deck hard, but he got no help from either umpire Rod Tucker – who turned down an lbw shout that England reviewed and proved to be “only” clipping the stumps – or Bairstow.
Criticism seems churlish when Bairstow had just batted for almost seven hours across two days and faced 251 balls in compiling his highest Test score – but he would not, and should not, use that as an excuse. He batted beautifully again, time no issue, to add another 60 runs to his overnight 107, guiding England to their impressive total.
The innings was the second best by an English gloveman after Alec Stewart’s 173 in Auckland in 1997, and added to his annus mirabilis in which he has also made 150 in Cape Town and 140 on his home patch of Headingley.
The 26-year-old played shots all round the ground. There was one lovely late dab with the delicacy of a surgeon to the third-man boundary off the bowling of Eranga that brought up the 300.
And, later, a cover drive off Rangana Herath where he waited for the ball, got to the pitch and caressed it through the slightest of gaps between two extra covers.
England piled on 105 in the morning, with Bairstow and Woakes taking their partnership, 52 overnight, up to 144 to shift the power to the home team as the Sri Lankan bowlers, so impressive on day one, failed to extract any untoward movement from the surface. – The Independent