Recalling Jonny Bairstow for Ben Foakes is right decision – just ask Australia

MIKE ATHERTON says star of last summer is more likely to help England win a match with the bat than lose it with the gloves.

Jonny Bairstow will be back with the bat for England this Ashes summer. Picture: Mark Metcalfe - CA/Cricket Australia via Getty Images

NO DOUBT there will be howls of protest from Surrey supporters and members of the specialist wicketkeeping fraternity, but ask yourself a simple question: who would Australia like to see walking out at Edgbaston at No 7 in a month’s time? Jonny Bairstow or Ben Foakes? Bairstow is back, and – once fit to do the job – rightly so.

Bairstow is a brilliant batsman and more than competent wicketkeeper; Foakes is a brilliant wicketkeeper and more than competent batsman. No team would be unhappy with either in their ranks, but only one man can do the job and that choice is a philosophical one to some degree. My own view is that Bairstow is more likely to help England win a match with bat than lose it with gloves. He would be my choice.

Rob Key said it was a “seriously tough” decision to drop Foakes and that the selectors “agonised” over it – but was it, and did they? England had shown that they were not wedded to Foakes when Ollie Pope retained the gloves for the second Test in Pakistan, after Foakes had missed the first with illness (England won both matches). Brendon McCullum had said publicly that when fit again Bairstow was an automatic selection – unsurprisingly since no player, perhaps, was more central to the transformation of the Test team last summer than the Yorkshireman.

Bairstow has looked in good form since his return with the bat – but can he keep for five days on his surgically repaired leg? Picture: Mitchell Gunn/Getty Images

There are two considerations around Bairstow’s automatic return. The first is whether he has returned to full fitness for what is the more arduous task of wicketkeeping as opposed to fielding. This much must be taken on trust, and that the medical staff know their man: it was a shocking leg injury that Bairstow suffered on the golf course late last summer and he has kept wicket sparingly on his return for Yorkshire since then. Wicketkeeping in a five-day Test match is a hard physical challenge, particularly from the waist down, and if there is a weakness, it will be found out.

The second consideration is whether there was another position that could be found for Bairstow, so that Foakes could also play. Clearly, Harry Brook should not be moved from No 5, where he batted so spectacularly in the winter, and therefore the question remains whether Bairstow could open in place of Zak Crawley. Bairstow is such an extraordinary cricketer it would be wise to keep all options open, but he has never opened in Test cricket, and has only opened in first-class cricket once, in 2018 against Essex at Chelmsford, when pushed up the order for quick runs. Bairstow is not an opener (nor is Ben Stokes for that matter).

The question is not one of fairness, but what gives England the best chance of winning. Foakes and Bairstow both played in the same team last summer, but that was before Brook made himself indispensable. The dropping of Foakes is the unlucky consequence of Bairstow’s initial injury, Brook’s ascent, and Bairstow’s recovery. England are due to play five Tests in India this winter, and Foakes can look forward to playing a part in that.

Foakes makes way for Bairstow, having held the gloves through the southern summer. Picture: Matthew Lewis/Getty Images

Save for one match against India at the Oval in 2021, Bairstow has not kept wicket for England since late 2019, when he was replaced by Jos Buttler, but in the 49 matches in which he performed that role, he proved himself to be top class with bat and gloves. It is not hard to imagine the destruction he might cause, coming in at No 7 against an old ball and a tiring attack.

It was a newsworthy announcement of the first Test squad – the squad is for the Ireland Test only but clearly provides pointers to England’s thinking for the Ashes – given that Jofra Archer will be out for the summer. It was only a week ago that Archer returned early from the Indian Premier League and England’s medical team were hopeful that a fortnight’s rest would see him good. Scans returned on Sunday evening scuppered that optimism, after they showed a recurrence of the stress fracture to the right elbow that has blighted his career recently. It is desperate news for Archer, who was said to be distraught. He now faces another lengthy and lonely road back to full fitness, and England must plan for the Ashes (and possibly the World Cup in October) without him. Key said the fast bowler remains desperate to play all formats in future but that expectation must now be considered a hopeful rather than realistic one.

Archer has not played a Test match for more than two years, since England’s tour to India in the early months of 2021. He has not, therefore, been a part of the transformation under Stokes and McCullum, although it was hoped that he would form part of a phalanx of fast bowlers for the Ashes series, the intense nature of which will require some rotation of bowlers. Those plans have had to be ripped up to some degree.

Jonny Bairstow‘s highest runs tally for Tests in a calendar year was in 2016, when he kept wicket throughout. Picture: Gareth Copley/Getty Images

As well as Archer, Olly Stone, the Nottinghamshire fast bowler, will also be unavailable for the start of the series with a hamstring injury. Key was impressed recently by Brydon Carse, the Durham fast bowler, but he is also on the injury list. So in the first Test squad of the summer, Mark Wood is the lone quick bowler (Wood is on paternity leave at present), surrounded by more traditional English-style swing and seam bowlers: James Anderson, Stuart Broad, Chris Woakes, Ollie Robinson and Matthew Potts.

At least the news is more optimistic where Anderson is concerned. He tweaked his groin in the most recent County Championship fixture for Lancashire, but it is not thought to be serious and the expectation is that he will be fit for the opening Ashes Test, and possibly the Ireland match as well. As for Stokes’s fitness, who knows? He has done precious little bowling in the IPL, but how much should be read into that is questionable.

Given any uncertainty in that regard, the news that Pope has been confirmed as England’s official vice-captain with immediate effect is significant. Pope has stood in for Stokes before, but in an unofficial capacity, and clearly England’s selectors see him as a captain in waiting. That much at least will please Surrey’s supporters: what the selectors take away with one hand, they give with the other.

-The Times

Originally published as Recalling Jonny Bairstow for Ben Foakes is right decision – just ask Australia