Bairstow blow but there’s no rush for cover

JONNY BAIRSTOW will get a clearer picture of how long he will spend on the sidelines following his freak golf accident when he visits a specialist on Tuesday.

Bairstow, 32, confirmed he needed an operation on a suspected lower left leg fracture after slipping walking to the third tee of the Pannal course in Harrogate around 9am on Friday morning. He was playing a round with two friends during a break of 11 days between international commitments.

The ECB immediately ruled England’s unofficial player of 2022 out of the final LV= Insurance Test against South Africa and next month’s Twenty20 World Cup, with the expectation that the injury will also put him out of contention for December’s Test tour of Pakistan.

However, the England management are said to be in no rush to name Bairstow’s replacement in the squad for the T20 tournament in Australia. They

have until September 16 to submit their final 15-man squad to the ICC, and will now contemplate whether to recall exiled veteran Alex Hales or arguably more likely advance the youth of the uncapped Will Jacks.

Nottinghamshire’s Ben Duckett has been added to the squad for the series-deciding Test at the Kia Oval. The 27-year-old left-hander,

who admits he had not given a Test recall a second thought on the eve of England’s red-ball revolution, believes his expressive game perfectly suits their current attacking mentality.

‘At the start of the summer, I was nowhere near playing for England and Test cricket, and I’ve learned from being in the England side and coming out the other side that if you think too much ahead or start worrying about what’s going on above, that’s when you put yourself under pressure,’ Duckett said.

And so while Ben Stokes’ team were intoxicating this country’s cricket-watching public with bold and ultimately successful performances against New Zealand and India, the diminutive Duckett was contentedly piecing together his first 1,000-run firstclass season since 2016 — the year in which he made his four Test appearances to date.

‘Obviously, I think it’s the amount of runs you score, no matter what the team is doing, that’s going to get you to play but I certainly think that my style of batting is what they’re kind of doing,’ he said.

‘This England team’s been really exciting to watch and I’d be surprised if a lot of young English players weren’t desperate to kind of knock that door down and get in that side.’

Duckett and Harry Brook both galloped to hundreds against the South Africans in England Lions’ landslide, pre-series win in Canterbury recently and although Brook will almost certainly be Bairstow’s replacement at five for the third and final Test this coming Thursday, a second recall within hours — following selection for the upcoming Twenty20s in Pakistan — provides Duckett with a clear indication of where he stands in a pecking order laced with loyalty.

And with Brendon McCullum intent on a policy of choosing the next-best player rather than get bogged down in positional arguments, it leaves him one further top-six injury or another’s failure away from adding to his four Test caps earned versus Bangladesh and India in 2016-17.

What knowledge then did

Duckett glean from his first incarnation as an international cricketer when Ravi Ashwin proved his nemesis? A limited amount, he argues.

‘I don’t think experience-wise anyone’s necessarily ready for it until you go and play in the environment, and India’s one of the toughest places to go,’ he said.

‘A lot of teams struggle out there, so I didn’t take too much from that.

‘That was a long time ago now and a lot of things have changed.’