This last week marked Jonny Bairstow’s 100th Test for England. Oft-maligned, oft-derided, his story is one of English cricket’s greatest, and he deserves a damn sight more gratitude than he gets.
Yorkshire
Ok, I may be predisposed to love Jonny Bairstow. As an adoptive Yorkshireman, raised by my Dad on stories of great players of the past, how could I fail to root for David Bairstow’s son, who’s come through such adversity to finish up with a great Test career. He’s a World Cup winner, and but for a freak accident would have held both World Cups at the same time. He built himself up through challenges both personal and sporting, and came out the other side a winner. For the life of me, I can’t understand why he isn’t more loved beyond the boundaries of his home county.
‘My dad really did believe that Yorkshire was the epicentre of the world’,1 Jonny writes in his autobiography, A Clear Blue Sky. David Bairstow wasn’t the only one. You get a sense, through that book, that Jonny takes the White Rose as seriously as David did, and you understand the pride and passion he feels in turning out for his dad’s old county. That love pours back at him from the Yorkshire faithful (among whom I count myself). There is no player - not Joe Root, Adil Rashid, or any other England superstar - whom the Headingley crowd wants more to see succeed. We don’t just want to see one of our own succeed; it’s much more than that. There’s an emotional tug to watching Bairstow play, that harks back to something so very simple: his dad would have been so proud.
So it was such a shame to see the coverage and conversation dominated by questions such as ‘is Jonny Bairstow the worst player to play 100 Tests?’ rather than an appreciation of a truly great cricketer. For a start, Bairstow is comfortably the best player in his role that England have available. He’s a much better player than many have given him credit for, with the character and temperament to match.
This is a man who responded to a 5-0 shellacking in the 2013-14 Ashes by completely changing his technique and, in doing so, becoming one of the best players in the world. Who was dropped by England and subsequently put together one of the best individual County Championship campaigns ever, to retain the trophy and return to the England side to win the Ashes in the same summer. Who muscled his way into an all-conquering England ODI side and played the innings of a lifetime to save their World Cup campaign.
Bairstow the Batsman
If you got all your information off Twitter, you could be forgiven for thinking Bairstow - whose average, at 36.39, hardly sets the world alight - was one of the worst ever to bat for England. Except the man has a higher batting average than players like Mike Gatting, Mark Butcher, WG Grace, Moeen Ali, Ian Botham and Andrew Flintoff. Not too shabby.
All the more impressive when you consider the way Bairstow has been shunted about the order to make space for other players. In his hundred-Test career, spanning 190 innings, what do you think is the longest stretch played at the same position in the batting order? Eleven. Not eleven Tests. Eleven innings. He’s batted everywhere from number three to number eight - often, shunted about to try and allow other players to bat in their preferred positions.
Bairstow will do what is asked of him, because he loves playing for England, and he understands, pragmatically, what he has to do. But think of how good he is when given a clear role and position in the order: he transformed himself into one of the most destructive white-ball openers in the world under Eoin Morgan, given a clear role and direction, and both he and England reaped the rewards. For one summer under Stokes and McCullum, he was the best player in the world, hammering 681 runs in six Tests at an average of 75, peeling off record chase after record chase. He’s been dragged from pillar to post and still possesses a chunky Test average.
England’s Best
Of course, Bairstow isn’t just a batsman - he’s a wicketkeeper, too. It’s a specialist position, and an essential one: every team needs a keeper. The slight against Bairstow is often that he’s keeping a superior player - be that Buttler, or more recently, Foakes - out of the team.
Well, that simply isn’t true. In the group of people who’ve kept wicket for England since Matt Prior retired, Bairstow actually has the highest average - beating out Ollie Pope, Sam Billings, Jos Buttler and Ben Foakes. Sure, none of them are exactly setting the world alight, but sides need a wicketkeeper, and the stats show that Bairstow is clearly the best batter of those available.
He has a higher career average than Ollie Pope, who’s played most of his games as a specialist batsman, and beats out Buttler, the next-closest keeper, by almost five full runs. He’s more than seven runs per dismissal better than Ben Foakes, 14 higher than Billings, and the small matter of 33 runs better off than poor old James Bracey.
What about his 12 centuries in 100 games - surely that’s pretty poor?
Not so - Buttler made just two in 57 games; Billings and Bracey have never made one. Pope has a few, but none as a keeper, and Foakes - the man many are so desperate to replace Bairstow altogether - has two in 25 games. So in terms of matches-per-hundred, YJB is comfortably clear of the competition.
While nobody could claim the quality of his glovework outranks that of Foakes, he does very well in terms of dismissals per innings. Indeed, in that group of contemperaneous wicketkeepers, he does surprisingly well: at 2.144 dismissals per innings, only Ollie Pope (2.166) does better. Foakes has, in fairness, done a chunk of his keeping in India, where edges behind are less common, but he’s still a full half-dismissal per innings worse off, and 25 games is a fair old sample size.
So, no. Enough. Jonny Bairstow is England’s best Test wicketkeeper-batsman.
A Legend’s Achievements
Let’s cast back to 2019. England were almost down and out at their own World Cup, for which they’d meticulously planned and built a team. Defeats to Pakistan, Australia, and Sri Lanka left them needing to beat both India and New Zealand (semi-finalists and finalists of the last two world cups, and destined to repeat the feat this time) back-to-back in order to make the last four. No slip ups. No excuses.
And Jonny came to play. In 109 incredible minutes, he blazed his way to a match-winning 111 at better than a run a ball, hammering ten fours and four sixes against an attack including Shami, Bumrah and Yadav.
Days later, he repeated the trick - 106 off 99 balls against New Zealand in an effective quarter-final for England set them up for a crushing win at Durham, and the rest is history. It’s no exaggeration to say that England owe their greatest white-ball triumph to Jonny Bairstow.
Without Jonny Bairstow, there may have been no Bazball. Look at the figures:
136 from 92 chasing 299 to beat New Zealand in the Second Test
162 in the first innings and 71 chasing 296 in the second, to wrap up a 3-0 win against New Zealand at Headingley
106 to keep England in the game after India scored 416, followed by 114 in a record chase of 378 to win the match
Prior to 2022, England had chased scores higher than 296 just four times. They managed it thrice in that year, each time with match-winning contributions from YJB. Lose those three games, and there would have been a vastly different complexion on the Bazball way. England’s uber-aggression would have been written off as risk with no reward. He’s not its architect, or its leader, but he was, at its very inception, its most integral part. Bazball owes its very being to Jonny Bairstow.
YJB
It’s difficult to overstate the immense pride and courage of Jonny Bairstow. As a boy, he came home one day to find his father dead. His mum has beaten cancer more than once. He’s been dropped, haranged, written off as a player - and each time, he’s come back stronger.
He’s a two-time Ashes winner, a World champion, and a two-time County Champion for Yorkshire. He’s the man who made Bazball.
It’s time to put some respect on his name. It’s time for the whole country to be proud of Jonny Bairstow.
A Clear Blue Sky, p. 38