Bairstow paying a heavy price for dual role
Keeper-batsman burden and return to Test game hit player’s form, writes Tim Wigmore at Lord’s
In June 2017, Jonny Bairstow was roped in to open for England in the Champions Trophy semi-final. This was viewed as a temporary solution to the collapse in Jason Roy’s form: Bairstow had opened only eight times in domestic 50-over cricket, and never in one-day internationals.
What started out as an ad hoc response to a short-term crisis turned out to be the emergence of one of the most destructive openers in ODI history – 124 batsmen have scored 1,000 runs opening in ODI cricket, just three of those have a higher average than Bairstow’s 51.48. And none have a faster strike rate than his 109.06.
Yet there is increasingly an uncomfortable sense that this extraordinary run has come at a cost. Since his ODI elevation, Bairstow is averaging just 29.80 in 26 Tests. In the 18 months before moving to open, Bairstow averaged 58.80 in Tests.
Adapting to thrive in ODIS meant reordering his game. He has moved to be leg side of the ball in his stance, ideally suited to hitting through the line of the white ball, which seldom swings much. As important has been a subtle shift in mindset: Bairstow has invariably been an attacking player but thriving in ODIS has required moving the needle a little more in favour of aggression. The degree of risk that a batsman can embrace is different in ODIS to Tests.
But if this approach has helped Bairstow master white-ball cricket it has also made him more susceptible in Tests, especially against deliveries attacking his stumps. Before opening in ODIS, Bairstow averaged 16.12 in Tests against deliveries from pace bowlers that were hitting the stumps. Since the change, he is averaging just 6.83 against balls
from seamers that hit his stumps, being dismissed 12 times. Bairstow’s dismissal on the second day against Ireland, completing a pair, was also to a ball that seamed into him, though he was lbw rather than bowled.
Yet this failure was not without mitigation. Mark Adair greeted Bairstow in the second innings by teasing his outside edge with four away swingers before seaming the ball back to beat his inside edge.
The real mitigation, perhaps, was broader. In no other sport would players appear in an international game 10 days after winning the World Cup – let alone in a different format. On one level, Bairstow’s performance – and that of Joe Root, perhaps – in this game can be seen as an indictment of the relentless schedule.
Bairstow’s difficulties in this game have also reaffirmed the challenge for a keeper-batsman batting in the top order: he was nominated to bat at five, though the use of a nightwatchman pushed him down to six in the second innings. Test cricket’s multifarious demands have been a roadblock to keeper-batsmen excelling when batting in the top five. Only three keeper-batsmen to bat in the top five for at least 20 Tests have averaged 35 or above there – and, in the cases of both Kumar Sangakkara and AB de Villiers, their countries determined that this was shortchanging their batting. Batting in the top five while keeping wicket is a double shift so arduous that only one cricketer in Test history – Zimbabwe’s Andy Flower – can claim to have mastered it. When he bats in the top five and keeps, Bairstow’s record – an average of 31.20 from 20 innings – is in keeping with the historical norm for this dual role, with his significant drop-off in the second innings also typical.
And so the sense that Bairstow was not given the best chance to succeed at Lord’s was inescapable. Returning to No 7, as he will do when Ben Stokes and Jos Buttler return for the first Ashes Test, will give a better chance of combining keeping with regular run-scoring. But perhaps only reordering his approach more fully to the demands of Tests will give him the best possible chance.