BLUEY’S NEW ORDER
Keeper Bairstow relishing move up to No.5 slot
JONNY BAIRSTOW insists England’s latest tale of two keepers will be a glove story with a happy ending.
Test wicketkeeper Bairstow has been handed extra responsibility in next week’s first Test against Pakistan at Lord’s after new chief selector Ed Smith moved him up to No.5 in the order.
Smith’s bold recall of explosive one-day talent Jos Buttler gives England serious middle-order firepower – but it also means ‘Bluey’ has a potential rival for the keeper’s mitts, a predicament which might have made him uneasy in the past.
The last time England fielded Bairstow, Ben Stokes and Buttler in their axis, they were blown away by an innings in Chennai by India, with the three amigos contributing a modest 90 runs in six innings between them.
But as he modelled England’s new petrol-blue one-day strip for kit manufacturers New Balance, Bairstow welcomed Indian Premier League hit Buttler’s return as a nuclear deterrent for tiring bowlers.
Batting at No.5 should at least spare him the frustration of being stranded when the tail is blown away, as it was all too readily in Australia last winter, but he said: “I’m very proud to be asked to move up the order.
“It means the people in charge have got the belief in you to deliver. They are saying, ‘We want you to do this, we trust you, we believe in you’ – and that’s what you want within a team.
“I don’t think moving up will affect me in any way. I know I will relish it.
“We’re in a strong position and it’s exciting for us as a team to have a batting line-up with gamechangers all the way down.
“We could bat through a day, be five down, and next morning you’ve got Jos and Stokes walking out to bat, and if you’re a tired bowler you are going to get punished at some point.
“That’s the nature of people we have in the side – they can change a game in an hour or a session, and that’s exactly the way we need to be looking to play the game.”
As the Professional Cricketers Association representative in the England dressing room, Bairstow was at the union’s meeting in Birmingham to gauge the mood among players about The Hundred – cricket’s latest gift to botched, half-baked ideas.
He said: “My role is to overhear what’s going on.
“If we don’t keep working hard and pushing the boundaries within our game, we know people will have left us behind.”