Time to unleash the Jonny

Two nil down and facing the prospect of a second successive away whitewash, whilst once again being both out batted and out bowled (save for James Anderson) by Australia, it’s clear that something needs to change for England in the Ashes.

Given the injuries to Toby Roland-Jones, Steven Finn and Mark Wood, the travails of England’s bowling arguably couldn’t be helped but England’s batting problems are arguably harder to explain away beyond the simple point that the quality doesn’t exist. When only four of your batting picks average 40+ in first class cricket (and you clearly don’t trust one of them in Gary Ballance), you can’t expect the personnel to average much more in Test Cricket and thus put up sufficient scores to win games. Which then brings us to the question that England ought to be asking of themselves as they seek to get back into this series: Do we need to pick Bairstow purely as a batsman?

The reality is that for anyone who has followed County Cricket over the last four years, Bairstow is a giant in terms of domestic batsmen. His returns for Yorkshire dwarf anyone else in the County game including some hugely big names. Over the last three years his form has been nigh on ridiculous whenever he’s stepped back into the County ranks, topping the averages with an average of 82 and a century percentage of 35% (plus a healthy conversion rate). The below table highlights the leading run scorers over the last three years in County Cricket (minimum innings 20) and Bairstow averages over 15 more per innings than his closest rival.

Batsmen (Min 20 inns)	Inns	Runs	Ave	SR	50s	100s	Conv	Cent%
JM Bairstow	20	1649	82.45	0.79	5	7	1.40	35.00%
AG Prince	22	1478	67.18	0.68	5	5	1.00	22.73%
AN Cook	22	1445	65.68	0.53	4	6	1.50	27.27%
KC Sangakkara	54	3400	62.96	0.67	10	14	1.40	25.93%
SA Northeast	61	3522	57.74	0.64	16	9	0.56	14.75%
RN ten Doeschate	49	2648	54.04	0.67	17	5	0.29	10.20%
AC Voges	24	1241	51.71	0.53	8	2	0.25	8.33%
BM Duckett	59	2988	50.64	0.77	10	11	1.10	18.64%
JWA Taylor	20	991	49.55	0.57	5	2	0.40	10.00%
LS Livingstone	33	1618	49.03	0.58	9	4	0.44	12.12%
S van Zyl	21	1023	48.71	0.52	4	2	0.50	9.52%
AD Hales	30	1459	48.63	0.66	4	4	1.00	13.33%
AN Petersen	43	1995	46.40	0.62	7	6	0.86	13.95%
MJ Cosgrove	76	3484	45.84	0.64	15	11	0.73	14.47%
RJ Burns	70	3204	45.77	0.51	20	5	0.25	7.14%
WL Madsen	65	2974	45.75	0.55	14	9	0.64	13.85%
T Westley	56	2560	45.71	0.54	13	6	0.46	10.71%
CDJ Dent	71	3199	45.06	0.50	20	8	0.40	11.27%
JL Denly	65	2921	44.94	0.55	16	7	0.44	10.77%
GJ Bailey	20	894	44.70	0.59	5	3	0.60	15.00%

He also had one of the great County seasons in recent years in 2015 (though second only to Sangakkara’s epic 2017 in terms of recent efforts) as the below table of top 10 highest County season averages (min 8 matches) indicates:

Player	Mat	Runs	Ave	Year
KC Sangakkara	10	1491	106.5	2017
MR Ramprakash	14	2211	105.28	2006
MR Ramprakash	15	2026	101.3	2007
NRD Compton	11	1191	99.25	2012
NV Knight	10	1520	95	2002
DJ Hussey	12	1219	93.76	2007
JM Bairstow	9	1108	92.33	2015
SG Law	16	1820	91	2003
MR Ramprakash	11	1350	90	2009
MEK Hussey	14	1697	89.31	2003

And of the active England eligible players (if we ignore the bloke the ECB ask us to) he is the only one with a 50+ average in County Cricket (min 20 innings).

Batsmen (min 20 inns)	Sum of Runs	Ave
KP Pietersen	5031	59.89
JM Bairstow	5937	51.63
LS Livingstone	1618	49.03
ME Trescothick	13729	48.51
AN Cook	6465	47.54
GS Ballance	5396	47.33
JE Root	2679	47.00
NLJ Browne	3831	44.03
BM Duckett	3748	43.58
JM Clarke	2656	43.54
RJ Burns	5711	42.30
DW Lawrence	2072	42.29
IR Bell	8174	42.13
RS Bopara	8844	41.52
NRT Gubbins	2317	41.38
JC Hildreth	13344	41.19
H Hameed	1968	41.00
CT Steel	899	40.86
WL Madsen	8602	40.58
NRD Compton	9186	40.47

So, as we can see. of all the options available to England in terms of batsman to bring in, no-one even comes close to matching Bairstow in terms of output. If this scenario feels familiar, it’s probably because it mirrors the same such debates England were having in the mid 90’s about Alec Stewart and the wicket-keeper position.

Which then brings us on to what are the downsides?

Firstly Bairstow himself doesn’t want to do it and is committed to keeping for England, which is understandable given his keeping improvements over the last two years and the obvious kick he gets from being the focal point in this team. Yet there is a point where England management need to intervene and point out that to truly fulfil his potential greatness as a batsman and help England where their need is greatest, Bairstow ought to drop the gloves. Few wicket-keeper batsmen thrive in Test cricket if their top order cannot post scores (see Quinton De Kock for South Africa this summer gone). England need Bairstow the batsman to make this happen. Plus, unlike for England in the 90s, England have a mean batsman in Ben Foakes as their backup keeper. He may potentially be the best keeper in the world, but he also averages 40+ himself over the last three years in County Cricket.

Secondly, Bairstow’s Test form as a batsman alone is patchy. Which is a fair point

Grouping	Span	Mat	Runs	HS	Bat Av	100	Wkts	BBI	Bowl Av	5	Ct	St
Keeper	2013-2017	30	2179	167*	44.46	3	–	–	–	–	113	7
Not Keeper	2012-2015	17	753	95	28.96	0	–	–	–	–	10	0

Yet Jason Gillespie in 2015 remarked that a key part of his form turnaround was based on allowing Bairstow to dictate his technique and avoiding confusion in his approach.

In reality, given these considerations, the likeliest option available is a move up the order to 5 enabling Bairstow to keep and bat higher up the order (as he does very well for Yorkshire). Yet few keepers in Test history have combined excellent top to middle order batting, particularly in a struggling team, which suggests Bairstow could always be slightly compromised by two roles.

Ultimately given the situation in the series, although there are risks and England will be reluctant to disrupt their fielding and batting by changing their keeper halfway through an Ashes series, desperate times call for desperate measures. With quality batsmen lacking, England should be thinking hard about giving one of their best ones  every chance to shine.

Postscript – Mark Butcher eloquently states the case for this move here. It’s worth a listen. 

England: For the love of leg spin

Leg spin, the purists will tell you, is the hardest skill of all, yet when it’s done well there are few more beautiful sights in the game than a quality leg spinner turning his arm over and ripping a few past a batsman’s outside edge.

Sadly, such sights are becoming increasingly rarer. If the turn of the century was leg spins equivalent of Woodstock with Shane Warne and Stuart Macgill featuring for Australia, Anil Kumble wiling away day after day for India, Shahid Afridi and Danesh Kaneria coming through for Pakistan, then the current scene is more equivalent to a 16^th century puritan party – no flair, no fun.

Leg spin has scarcely gone through harder times with the demise of Kaneria and Afridi, the demolition of Imran Tahir and Amit Mishra, the unravelling of Adil Rashid, Steven Smith, Piyush Chawla and Fawad Ahmed, then the false dawn that was Devendra Bishoo’s brief international career. Internationally, it has gone the way of the orthodox off spinner.

Thus it was heartening to see a young leg spinner emerge almost from nowhere and give England’s test line-up a jolt. Tom Craddock may have scarcely elicited much of a mention in County Cricket’s dispatches but in dismissing Kevin Pietersen, Ian Bell and Matt Prior on a sunny afternoon in Chelmsford, he didn’t so much announce himself but stand screaming his own name at the top of a mountain.

It was also a reminder, or more a rekindling of memories from years gone by, of what we have always missed – the love which comes with watching a leg spinner basking in his art. England has hardly been a hot bed for leg spin bowling, but it was heartening to watch a young’un strutting his stuff. Nor is Craddock the only one, leg spinners have been emerging slowly among the County scene, perhaps inspired in their youth by watching Shane Warne destroy England batting line-ups for over a decade, like butterflies emerging from respective chrysalis’.

Yet history tells us to preach caution – Craddock has scarcely played for Essex this season and still has to make himself a regular in the first team. Adil Rashid’s recent struggles with the ball along with Scott Borthwick’s lack of bowling are a reminder of how difficult it is not to develop the art. Meanwhile, those with long memories may remember the names of Michael Munday and Mark Lawson, both promising leg spinning talents who have had an impact on the County game yet fallen away far too soon.

Whatever he goes to achieve in the game, be it being the next Shane Warne or perhaps the next Ian Salisbury, at least we can savour Craddock’s day in the sun. The day when he reminded us that leg spin is something to love after all.

Jos Buttler: 21st Century Twenty20 Template?

For those who haven’t seen much of Jos Buttler before, and are marvelling at the cameos which he has already delivered in his brief spell in international cricket, then you’ve missed out. Anyone who has watched Somerset play over the past three years will be ahead of the curve already because in the murky world of County Cricket, Buttler stood out like a beacon.

Even from an early age, he was unveiling the ramp shots he plays with remarkable ease, hitting full balls over the boundary rope for fun and keeping up with Somerset’s other notable big hitters – Trescothick, Pollard, Kieswetter and Trego. He has always played, as Scyld Berry notes here, a 360 degrees game with no limit to his ability to lift the ball over the boundary from any angle. All the while, he has executed with an icy veined veneer, giving little away to the opposition about which way he is about to hit the ball, eerily reminiscent of the best finishers. The only question was whether his talent would transfer to the international stage and so far, while the returns haven’t been particularly big, the signs are looking very good.

England has rarely seen a player capable of doing what he, potentially could do. English players have always previously trended towards the orthodox, leaving innovation and audacity to the other Test nations; few have ripped up the coaching manual and displayed such a range of stroke as Buttler. In that regard, he could well be a template for what is the future for English batsmen in the age of T20.

He was only 12 years of age when the first Twenty20 match was played in June 2003 so it’s no exaggeration to say that he’s grown up with cricket’s shortest format everywhere.  His generation is the first which will have developed from an early age with Twenty20 as their possible raison d’etre. Whereas in the past, young players would have been developed with first class or Test cricket as their sole career option, Buttler’s generation live in a very different world.

The ultimate question remains whether he will make the step up in Test cricket in the future, his domestic first class record is inferior to his shorter form one and questions have been previously raised about the robustness of his defensive technique. Nor is there much precedent for the great finishers of one day cricket stepping up successfully in Test cricket. But unlike his predecessors, who knows whether Buttler will even need to step up anyway such is the prevalence of T20 cricket.

But those are questions which will be answered as his career unfolds. For now, we must simply enjoy him for what he is: a young player capable of playing audacious strokes and hitting powerfully around the wicket and finishing an innings with a flourish. England have seldom had few players like him before, though one wonders if he is simply a sign of things to come; a template for how young players will play in the years ahead.