If Jonny Bairstow plays the remainder of England’s series against India, the final Test at Dharamsala will be a celebratory one, marking an achievement that didn’t seem realistic a few years ago: the Yorkshireman will become just the 17th Englishman to acquire 100 Test caps.
Ben Stokes got there himself in Rajkot, his way a lot more straightforward even if there have been off-field issues. No one has questioned Stokes’s presence in England’s best XI for close to a decade. For Bairstow, who began 12 years ago, it has been a journey of endless interrogations. Does he take the gloves or not? Where should he bat? Isn’t it Dan Lawrence’s turn now?
And so it adds up that, as we get closer to the big day, when tributes usually flood in about a storied résumé, Brendon McCullum has been fielding questions from the press about Bairstow’s place in the lineup. England’s head coach has predictably geed up his man – who is averaging 17 in the series – stating that “we’ve got to keep on giving him confidence and block out a lot of the external noise”. Even if more low scores follow in the fourth Test in Ranchi, it would be a surprise to see Bairstow left stranded on 99. This management group back their boys to the hilt, and they have to when this whole thing is about stripping away the fear and letting loose. Alex Lees is the only specialist batter to have lost his place since McCullum and Stokes took over, and that was after he had been given a whole summer.
So perhaps a few sweet whispers from Baz and Ben will be enough, extending what has been a strange career. There were the initial years when he was the young pup filling in for a team of all-timers, delivering scores of 95 and 54 against a hall-of-fame South Africa attack at Lord’s in 2012 when Kevin Pietersen was on the naughty step. It wasn’t until 2016 that he brought up his first century, in Cape Town, and became the go-to gloveman, scoring the most runs by a Test wicketkeeper in a calendar year. Then came his establishment as a limited-overs opener and the idea that he couldn’t have it all; success as a ball-striker at the top of the ODI order coincided with a downturn while lower down in the Test one. Ben Foakes and Jos Buttler had their goes behind the stumps and Bairstow spent the entirety of 2020 out of the Test side.
But England’s selectors still couldn’t resist the occasional late-night “You up?”. In India three years ago he was tasked with coming in at one-down and promptly reeled off three ducks in four innings. It seemed an endpoint until he was resurrected just months later against the same opposition in August 2021. Then came the arrival of McCullum and Stokes two summers ago to piece together the image of white-ball Bairstow nailing it against the red. Ensconced at No 5, he was ordered by his captain to keep pummelling the ball into the stands during their remarkable 179-run partnership at Trent Bridge against New Zealand. Three more centuries followed in the space of a month, his work over that period of three Tests done at better than a run a ball. After a decade, it had all finally clicked. And then he broke a leg.