A SIGN OF how well England have recovered from their trial by spin in the Gulf states last winter and how things have moved on rapidly is that the only issue up for discussion with the Test team is the way that Jonny Bairstow was inconvenienced by the pace and aggression of Kemar Roach at Trent Bridge.
First, let me deal with the way he played a series of genuinely quick and mainly straight short balls in that short stay at the crease. The sequence was that he made a late jab at the first one, which did not bounce as much as he had expected, and had to fend the next one off his nose when it bounced substantially higher. He might have been lucky that it did not quite carry to gully but after that I thought he played the next few well, behind the line of the ball and standing tall.
At that stage, for any batsman, the adrenaline is pumping madly and you are steeling yourself to move quickly in what is basically self-defence. The tame lob to mid- on, which cost him his wicket, was merely because he played too early at one that stayed in the pitch and did not come to him as expected.
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This is not just an issue of pace but a question of context; this being a Test match, his every move was being closely scrutinised and as the new man in the eleven he is the most vulnerable to critical assessment.
When Strauss, about whom we rightly have no concerns over the way in which he habitually deals with quick bowling, gets a snorter in admittedly dim light at Lord’s and fends Roach into slip’s hands, it is one “that he could do nothing about”, whereas for Bairstow, who gets out after riding a series of such balls, the manner of dismissal is “a problem”.
He will no doubt shout from the rooftops “I have no problem” but if that fails he might take heart from the career of one Stephen Rodger Waugh, who played a mere 168 Test matches, made 10,927 runs and always looked awkward against the short ball.
Whether Bairstow really does have a problem remains to be seen. The bigger picture is that he is now perceived to have a problem but the good news in a perverse sort of way is that he is likely to be given lots of practice to prove his ability against the short stuff.
Anybody with pretensions to pace will try him out and by definition he will find himself in an awkward position more often than he might like.
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Again the good news and the bad news in one go is that there are not that many express bowlers around in the county game, certainly not as many as in the days when the Caribbean was overflowing with proper quick bowlers and counties took the view that you were not a good team unless you had a West Indian in your ranks.
It was good for the overseas players who learnt about English conditions and good for aspiring Test batsmen in this country who saw what real pace was all about — not that any of this truly prepared you to face four of them on the same day when you played West Indies in Tests — but that is an old and laboured theme!
As such Bairstow had a brief and fruitless encounter with Essex’s Tymal Mills earlier in the season but will not see much more of that sort of hostility around the county circuit. There might be a number of very brisk bowlers around but that extra 5mph is what separates the men from the boys and that is what you don’t see so often nowadays.
With Roach sidelined, the only examination from pace at Edgbaston could come from Fidel Edwards, who was off the boil at Lord’s in the first Test and not required by West Indies at Trent Bridge. Nonetheless if Bairstow finds himself out there again with a newish ball in Edwards’ hands this time, the young Yorkshireman will know what to expect. All eyes will be watching.
The selectors, too, will be eagle eyed as they ponder the options for the South Africa series, which will see England up against Dale Steyn and Morne Morkel, who are both capable of testing a batsman’s moral fibre.
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If Bairstow gets runs this week, that will keep him in the frame. If he does not, he might well be sent back to Headingley after he has played a full part in England’s one-day games, to continue learning the game. If so he will be told he is still held in high regard by those that matter and that he should remember he has been picked now ahead of a talented bunch of middle-order players. It reminds me of when I was left out of the team towards the end of the series against the West Indies in 1980.
Luckily for me, nobody was saying I was unable to deal with extreme pace per se. The issue was that I was just not getting enough runs. I was back in the team in the Caribbean the following winter and, dare I say it, back in the runs.
By the start of the South Africa series the man who would have been picked for this current series, Ravi Bopara, should be fully fit again and will have had some cricket so he should be ready and keen to reclaim his place.
Yet there are questions against Bopara’s name, too. After his success against the West Indies, both in the Caribbean and at home, against whom he has made all three of his Test hundreds, and after which I recall writing that he had cemented his position at No 3, everything unravelled very quickly over the next three months in the Ashes series of 2009. That was not an issue of pace but of pressure and it is that sort of pressure that will be applied in the later months of this summer, too.
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For Jonny Bairstow the task is not to worry about what might or might not happen later but to focus his undeniable talent on the job of getting runs in the Edgbaston Test, starting on Thursday.