Recalling Bairstow for Foakes is the correct call — just ask Australia

Jonny Bairstow is back, and – once fit to do the job – rightly so.

Jonny Bairstow. Picture: Getty Images

No doubt there will be howls of protest from 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 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).

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.

As well as Archer, Olly Stone, the Nottinghamshire fast bowler, will also be unavailable for the start of the series with a hamstring injury.

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.

The Times