Jennings left stranded in no-man’s land by Bumrah’s brilliance
England opener tried to do the right thing but the unorthodox bowler had other ideas for him
He did the kind of dance dads do. He then twitched as if stung by a wasp
Obeying England’s need to leave balls moving away outside off stump, Keaton Jennings paid a horrible price for trying to do the right thing. A good intention has left him in a very bad place, with the kind of dismissal that belongs in a showreel of batsmen’s nightmares.
Next time you feel embarrassed by a slip at work, compare it to Jennings’s attempt to deal with the 13th ball of this Test, where England were under orders not to repeat the Trent Bridge tremors. Jennings and Alastair Cook strode out on a late summer Hampshire morning with instructions not to push and prod at balls that would offer catches to the sticky hands in India’s slip cordon.
Message received and understood, boss. Jennings, whose feet have become more and more glued to the spot since his firstinnings 42 at Edgbaston, entered the arena with a chance to start the series afresh. Uppermost in his mind, by the look of it, was the need to be more disciplined and patient. Told by countless batting experts – some of them former England captains – that he needed to move more decisively at the crease, Jennings did the kind of dance dads do at parties as he was removed by a world-class ball from Jasprit Bumrah.
One run from Cook was on the board in the third over when Bumrah set off on his prancing horse run towards the sitting target that Jennings has become. Bumrah, a real find for India, let fly with a medium length delivery that seemed to be angling past the mythical fourth stump: precisely the sort of ball England’s openers needed to leave if they were to make amends for the summer’s low scores.
Not unreasonably, Jennings, who tends to be upright and static, calculated that the right response was to drop back towards his stumps and listen to the whistle of the ball as it hurtled through. But this one had other plans. Bumrah made it chop back in towards middle and leg as Jennings was trailing his rear pad in front of the stumps – safely, he assumed.
Thwack. A back leg lbw, with no shot offered: the sort of ignominy that makes Test batsmen want to escape to remote islands under aliases and never be seen again. Nature had one more cruel trick to play before Jennings could escape to the pavilion. The blow to the inside of his back pad shocked him so much that he twitched and stumbled, as if stung by a wasp. All his movements became ungainly. “Dad dancing” is no way to end an innings when your place in the side is in doubt to begin with.
As ever, the audience split two ways. A social media pile-on cast Jennings as “rubbish” and “a clown” and declared he should never play for England again. Here at the ground, there was sympathy from people who know what it is to be bamboozled by a cricket ball with a mind of its own. The spiteful change of direction taken by Bumrah’s secret weapon ball would have tested the reflexes of any batsman, however talented. The adjoining M27 has probably never seen such a diversion.
But there is a wider problem Jennings cannot evade. His own form in this series and the fallibility of England’s openers have provided an opening for India’s bowlers, who have found their groove. Together Cook and Jennings have averaged less than 20 in this series and Jennings has scored 42, eight, 11, 20, 13 and nought. With such flimsy resistance at the top, India’s bowlers are not made to wait for a crack at Joe Root and Jonny Bairstow, both batting higher than they would like. England lost five wickets in 26.3 overs here before Sam Curran and Moeen Ali restored the team’s dignity.
The search for a functioning opening pair will be stepped up unless Jennings in particular can cure his habit of standing still and waiting for the ball to arrive. To talk of players “freezing” without
clear evidence is dangerous, because there is still a stigma attached to that label from the player’s point of view. Only Jennings can say whether he is overwhelmed by his current difficulties. Top-level sport, though, does not hang around for people to formulate their answers.
Jennings has now gone 15 innings without scoring a Test 50 and his only hundred in 19 goes was the 112 he scored on his debut in Mumbai in December 2016. Curran has scored more runs in this series than Cook and Jennings combined. Part of England’s worry is that openers seem incapable of capitalising on good starts to their Test careers.
“Test cricket is a ruthless environment, with extreme highs and lows,” Jennings observed after being recalled in place of Mark Stoneman, who was Cook’s partner on last winter’s Ashes tour (England are going round the candidates again).
So, in that sense his back-leg lbw to Bumrah will have come as no surprise. But his disorientation was on a level he has probably never experienced, and which few batsmen have. One leg poked out at a jaunty angle, the other (the wrong one) stopped a ball that was careering towards his stumps at a bewildering angle.
Only sustained excellence – stacks of runs – can remove such images from the gallery – and the demons from the head.