Compton knows big runs are now needed
NICK COMPTON admits he will have to block out the ‘noise’ surrounding his England future if he is to score the runs he needs to extend his Test career beyond this series against Sri Lanka.
The pressure was cranked up on the Middlesex batsman following his three-ball duck in Leeds.
Perhaps fortunate to retain his place in the squad for this series, Compton has not managed to score a half-century at any level since his first-innings 85 in the first Test against South Africa in Durban.
That was a knock from No.3 that helped set up a fine win for Alastair Cook’s side.Yet his form has unravelled since and, having made a top score of just 44 for Middlesex this summer, now needs big runs to quieten the criticism and speculation surrounding his future.
“I think it takes practice to shut that noise out,” he says.
“That’s one of the keys to being a successful international sportsman – being able to work on blocking those things out, to control how you manage these things. I’ve not had the best start to the season, but I feel like I’m managing it pretty well.
“It’s something you have to get used to I guess and that’s something I’ve done pretty well of late. That noise starts getting a lot quieter when you start playing well but of course it is a challenge.”
The 32-year-old has been frank enough to concede he wasn’t sure if he would get selected for the first Test of the summer and was given no assurances either he would make it despite the very public speculation over his position.
“I don’t think you expect that,” he said. “I don’t think there’s any assurances in top-level sport. I think it’s a case of creating that for yourself and it comes down to weight of runs.”
Compton has experience of producing big innings at Test level, scoring two centuries in his first spell with England when he was captain Alastair Cook’s opening partner for the 2012 tour of India and home and away series against New Zealand the following year.
Yet despite back-to-back hundreds at Dunedin and Wellington, Compton was dropped before the 2013 Ashes after losing form and falling out with then coach Andy Flower.
So what has he learned from that first spell?
“I probably didn’t take my chances with two hands,” he said. “Maybe with one, one-and-a-half hands. I was averaging 31 at the end of it; if I was averaging 51 things would have been different. I’m very clear about things. When I look back, the way I went about those innings, there was a consistency about the way I approached them. I’ve just got to do it better.”
Compton does have regrets about his performances in South Africa, cursing his dismissal for 45 when set in Cape Town and now hoping he can finally show his worth at this level.
“Personally, it would have been nice to have kicked on and got some big scores and that’s something that grated with me for a couple of weeks afterwards,” he said.
“I could easily have got two hundreds in a row. Cape Town I was in; I was set. That’s one I look back on and think ‘bugger’. That 85 in Durban could quite easily have been 100.
“Suddenly you’ve got two hundreds and the whole landscape changes, that’s how it works. Runs breed runs.The more runs you get the more desire you get, the more you want more of them and you suddenly get into that zone.
“There is a lot of graft, tough balls to go through, suddenly you get through it, edge one down to third man and think, ‘Yes, I got a 50. How did I get 50 today? I don’t know’. Suddenly you’re on 70 and the 100 comes and then you’re lying in your hotel room looking at the ceiling wondering, ‘How have I got a hundred there? I could have been out three times’.
“That’s how it works. It comes from the energy you create – the self-belief, commitment to playing each ball as well as I can. If you’ve got that, good things come.”
Compton certainly needs something good to happen this week to help persuade the doubters he belongs in this England team.
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