No point being fun to watch if tourists suffer a 4-1 drubbing

FOR all the good things that this England team have done in making people want to watch their matches, right now they sit second bottom in the World Test Championship table and to me results remain the most important currency.

In the end, all sports teams are judged on their statistics. How they end up at the close of a season or a series. In cricket, how many runs you scored, the wickets that you took.

Yes, you will inevitably get people talking about the style in which you played the game and rightly so, and that is where the likes of shane Warne, Ian Botham and Brian Lara come into the conversation.

This England side have provided great viewing over the past two years, too, but the win-loss ratio is the most important thing in my eyes, so they must get the scoreline versus India back to 3-2 in Dharamshala this week.

Of course, they will still have lost the series, but they can then point to the third days of the third and fourth Tests, when they let things slip on each occasion, as a justification that they were competitive across the entire fivematch tour. That they simply failed to take their opportunities.

Come home with a 4-1 defeat, though, and the gulf between the sides looks huge. Inevitably, it will feel like the same old story for England in India.

The wheels came off after England won the first match of the series in India three years ago, but this time they must tell themselves there is no such thing as a dead rubber, and pick the best XI to win this game — not worry about the future, who’s going to be playing in the Ashes down the line, or giving someone a ‘go’.

This will be a great occasion for Jonny Bairstow. He’s an emotional cricketer, as we’ve seen over the years, and to reach 100 Test matches after all the ups and downs he has been through will make his family incredibly proud.

He polarises opinion at times, but he has done pretty much everything England have asked of him whether it be as a batter or as a wicketkeeper-batter. Because of his late father David and the connection with keeping, he’s always been reticent to give up the gloves.

But because of his brilliance with the bat during an international career of incredible innings — think of the six hundreds in eight appearances in 2022 or his maiden hundred in Cape Town alongside Ben stokes in 2016 — debate about his best role in the side has lingered.

This is a big game for him, however. Ahead of it, some people are saying this could be a case of 100 and out, and he will know it.

There are generally two types of cricketers. Those that say they don’t read things in the media, concern themselves with external noise or listen to the pundits. But he is one of the others. someone who reads everything and loves to prove people wrong, and so — if he can control his emotions — it wouldn’t surprise me if he silences the doubters again.

The next Test series against West Indies is four months away, and a lot can happen in the interim, but if he wants to guarantee being around this summer, he needs runs because if everyone’s fit, England will have one too many batters in the mix for top-six selection.

Harry Brook, a player who represents the future, has to come back in across all formats and that means one of the others giving way. Zak Crawley and Ben Duckett have done well, so the openers aren’t going to move aside, and neither are stokes or Joe Root.

Ollie Pope might be vice- captain but he is the other one needing a score, to be honest, because after that 196 in Hyderabad, he’s looked surprisingly skittish.

Equally, if Bairstow smashes the ball around in the IPL and Twenty20 World Cup, Brendon McCullum and stokes may feel that he is the type of cricketer they still want in their team.

And for all Ben Foakes’ plaudits this winter, given the way Bairstow bats with the lower order, and indeed the way he’s batted in England over the past two seasons, there’s still an argument for playing the Yorkshireman as a wicketkeeper at home.

That’s a debate to be reignited at a later date. In the here and now, it’s essential England win once more on Indian soil.