“Ben [Foakes] is the best wicketkeeper in the world,” said Ben Stokes last summer. “That’s not just my own opinion, that’s a lot of people’s opinions.” Since Stokes said that, Foakes has been left out of England’s Test team in favour of Ollie Pope – who isn’t even a wicketkeeper – and now Jonny Bairstow.

The first time Pope got the nod ahead of Foakes it was because the Surrey man had been repeatedly consumed by an urgent necessity on the eve of a match against Pakistan. They stuck with Pope for the next game too though even though Foakes had regained solidity of the bowels by then.

We’re not quite where we were in 2019, but it still seems very much an option to not pick Ben Foakes. Jonny Bairstow has edged him out for the Ireland Test now.

Does this mean that Stokes was either lying or getting carried away when he described Foakes as “the best wicketkeeper in the world” then? Not necessarily. Maybe he thinks keeping is less important than batting. Or maybe he thinks it’s exactly equally important and that Bairstow isn’t massively inferior at it while being significantly better at batting.

Maybe as decisions go, it’s really very close.

> Two dismissals an innings and over: who was Test cricket’s busiest wicketkeeper?

There is almost no head-to-head between wicketkeepers that doesn’t end up reduced to the ‘Pure Keeper versus Batter-Who-Keeps’ trope. Whatever the actual abilities of the two players involved, these two stereotypes are so long established, they almost can’t help but impose themselves. Often people will pick a side of the argument and view their player quite realistically while simultaneously pigeonholing the other guy.

It’s a great argument though because it twangs at people’s sense of fairness. If two players are of a similar level of overall ability but with a different balance of skills, it’s hard not to conclude that the eventual selection decision wasn’t made because of some fairly minor personal preference.

And honestly, maybe it is that. If shopping in the internet age has taught us all anything, it’s that sometimes whims and random prejudices can be a great way to overcome decision paralysis.

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We once joked that England’s plan for Jonny Bairstow was to keep him guessing. It always seemed like the aim was to treat him as inconsistently as possible to keep him on his toes. After scoring four hundreds and a fifty in five innings last summer, it seemed safe to assume that he had made the number five spot his own. And then along came Harry Brook.

Cricketers and coaches often talk of ‘role clarity’. Only Moeen Ali can really rival Bairstow for role opacity.

Remember all those times England thought Bairstow should keep wicket? Or all those times they decided he should be freed from the wicketkeeping gloves?

Remember when he was inked in at number three? Remember when he was a very successful number six? Remember when he was a white ball specialist?

But then came the summer of 2022 and a run of form so pure and perfect that everyone immediately agreed you didn’t want to mess with this. This was Bairstow’s thing: batting at five, making incredible hundreds.

Let’s recap…

In Nottingham, against New Zealand, he made 136 off 92 balls in the fourth innings as England chased down 299 to win.

In Leeds, against the same opposition, he made 162 off 157 balls after England had been 21-4 and 55-6. He then made 71 not out off 44 balls in the second innings as England chased 296 to win.

In Birmingham, against India, he made 106 after England had been 44-3 and 83-5. Then he made 114 not out in the second innings as England chased 378 to win.

That first innings, in particular, was a herculean effort; just purely and simply one of the great Test innings, even if he hadn’t then followed it with three more hundreds and an unbeaten fifty in his next four innings.

(Speaking of Herculean, did you know that Elton John’s middle name is ‘Hercules’? What we especially love about this is that Elton was of course born Reginald Kenneth Dwight. That means that in 1972, when he embarked on changing his name, he thought to himself, “My middle name should definitely be Hercules.” And then at no point between first thinking that his middle name should be Hercules and filing the paperwork to make his middle name Hercules did he subsequently think, “Actually maybe Hercules is a bit much.” We’re pretty confident he still thinks it’s a good choice, particularly now that he’s Sir Elton Hercules John.)

Quite understandably, Bairstow couldn’t quite maintain that incredible run of form, following it up with 0, 18 and 49 against South Africa. With hindsight, failing to maintain that incredible run of form was a mistake.

Because at the time of writing, nine innings into his Test career (with one still incomplete), Bairstow’s stand-in at number five, Harry Brook, is maintaining that incredible run of form. He has made four hundreds and three fifties and is averaging over 100 with a strike-rate of 99.38. He has made heavy runs in both Pakistan and New Zealand, which are pretty different places, batting-wise. That piece we wrote last week about how he could be stopped has aged like an already-on-the-turn avocado.

When Jonny Bairstow is back to full fitness, is one or other of these men being left out of the England Test team?

No.

If Brook and Bairstow are both fit, both will be in the England Test team. That means one of them will be batting somewhere other than five. One man has batted flawlessly and only ever at number five. The other man has a lot of experience of trying to make other spots his own.

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Jonny Bairstow has worked out that he can score twice as many runs simply by doubling his strike-rate. Daryl Mitchell has realised he’ll probably keep hold of his Test place if he scores a hundred in every single match. But what do these developments actually prove?

Because yeah, sure, Jonny Bairstow’s in form right now. But will he still be in form next week? Will he still be in form next year? Will he still be in form in 10 or 20 or 50 years’ time?

The same goes for Daryl Mitchell. It’s all well and good scoring 538 runs in a three-match series, but what good will that do him in Pakistan in November? What good will it do him when New Zealand are touring England in 2032 or 2042 or 2072?

And okay, they’ve each shown they can make runs in these conditions against these bowling attacks. But can they make runs in India or Australia, against those teams’ bowlers? Could the two of them make hundreds against Jeff Thomson in his pomp, bowling from 18 yards on a disgraceful club pitch that’s unfit for cricket? And would they be so dominant batting in a pyroclastic flow against a bowling machine set to 200mph?

To truly prove yourself as a batter, you have to make runs against everyone, everywhere, in all formats and all match situations. Anything less than that and someone, somewhere is going to be left unimpressed.

Can Mitchell and Bairstow make runs one-handed? Can they make runs with their eyes closed? Can they make runs without using a bat?

These are sterner tests. Daryl Mitchell and Jonny Bairstow haven’t proven themselves yet.

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Violence is great, isn’t it? Violence is so much fun. We greatly enjoyed Jonny Bairstow, at Trent Bridge, with a cricket bat.

At tea on day five, England were 139-4, 160 runs from victory and Jonny Bairstow was on 43 off 48 balls, which is quick, but still within the bounds of normality.

Straight after tea, England made 59 runs in four overs, 45 of which were scored by Bairstow, which is very much not normal – particularly in the context of a Test match, where you actually have a choice about how how you go about things.

In a limited overs match, circumstance forces your hand. Jonny Bairstow chose to do this.

It’s no great exaggeration to say that in that short passage of play, England went from losing the match to waltzing it. As tonal shifts go, it was reminiscent of the church scene in Kingsman.

If you don’t know Kingsman, it’s a knowingly daft and at times incredibly violent spy comedy. The church scene is by far the most violent and best.

The context is that Samuel L Jackson’s character has distributed free mobile phones to people and when he triggers them, they make a noise that somehow turns the owner into a frenzied murderer.

Colin Firth’s Harry Hart is in a church that very quickly goes from this…

To this…

There’s a comic quality to the scene, but as you can no doubt deduce, the comedy’s built on extreme frenetic violence, so bear that in mind if you want to actually watch it.

Everyone in the church goes nuts, but because Harry Hart is a highly-trained secret agent, he kills somewhere around 40 people all on his own.

Jonny Bairstow is Harry Hart.

Matt Henry bowled short. Jonny shot him in the gut.

Trent Boult bowled length. Jonny impaled him with a wooden pole and then shot him in the face.

Michael Bracewell pitched one outside off. Jonny set fire to his head.

For whatever reason, the part of the mind that asks you whether you’re sure you’re doing the right thing was switched off during the tea break and from that moment on Bairstow just got on with the simple reflex job of hitting the ball/murdering people.

The soundtrack to the church scene is the guitar solo from Lynyrd Skynyrd’s Free Bird. A fun game that you’re now too old to play is to listen to that solo and try and guess when it’s about to end. If you’ve only heard it once or twice before, you will be wrong dozens of times. It’s the rock guitar solo version of the climax of Dudley Moore’s Beethoven sonata parody, which has well over a minute of ‘ending’.

Bairstow’s innings had a similar multi-climactic quality. How do you follow a barrage of fours and sixes? With another barrage of fours and sixes, of course. Then another. Then you impale three people with a giant wooden spike. Then more fours and sixes.

Shackles are bad

There’s a lot of casting off of shackles in the headlines about England’s win. Writing in the Telegraph, Michael Vaughan has lauded Ben Stokes and Brendon McCullum for ‘ripping’ them off.

“It is the same team, more or less, but they have been freed up and it has totally changed their psychology,” says Vaughan.

It sounds such a simple instruction: “Shackles are bad, mmkay. Cast them off, mmkay.” But it really isn’t simple at all. As an illustration of the potential response the players are up against, it was only a week ago that Vaughan deemed a Jonny Bairstow dismissal “dumb” and “pathetic” when he was out trying to drive Kyle Jamieson.

“You can have all the preparation and team meetings, but until you play smart… See him off. Get rid of him. Play a defensive shot. It is just dumb,” he said.

This is not meant to highlight hypocrisy on Vaughan’s part. He’s probably right. That was a dumb shot from Bairstow. And this was a fantastic, liberated, freewheeling innings. Vaughan is calling it as he sees it, but England are viewing things differently because they want to steer Bairstow towards what they think will be a more effective approach overall.

McCullum’s philosophy is not really about throwing off the shackles, so much as it’s about not second-guessing yourself. Sometimes your first guess is wrong, but England’s new coach believes that second guesses can be wrong too and that being caught between two guesses will inevitably be wronger still. So the instruction is just go with what you think is right, be decisive, and we’ll back that overarching approach and forgive specific errors.

That is actually not an easy message to convey. As we’ve said before, you can tell a batter to play freely, but he’s not necessarily going to buy that unless you can somehow show him that it’s what you really want.

To resort to cliché, talk is hugely affordable and actions are more audible than words. It’s hard to properly assess the actions of New England at this early juncture, but a common theme is a broad expression of faith in some players, which by extension becomes a similar message to everyone else in the team.

In marked contrast to the previous regime’s management of Jack Leach, Stokes has often been at pains to say how much he wants someone around. He definitely wanted James Anderson and Stuart Broad to be available for selection, for example. He definitely wanted Ollie Pope in the side too, no matter where there was an opening – even if it was at number three where Pope had never batted before. McCullum has also sounded out Moeen Ali to see if he was willing to unretire.

> Captain Stokes v Captain Root

Crucially, they’re not saying they need these players because saying that would undermine other squad members. They’re saying they want them. Bairstow may well reason that if Stokes so desperately wants Pope in the side that he’ll bat him out of position, he must want Bairstow in the side even more. That must be a bit of a boost.

One day, “You’re all great! You’re all amazing!” might start to wear thin, but for now England players feel like the coach and captain have faith in them.

That’s also why you hear these coded non-criticisms like ‘the intent was right’ when a player gets out to a shit shot. It’s not a cop out. It’s a way of saying the batter made the wrong choice but in the right way. The aim is to be supportive of the approach in the belief that this will result in better returns for the team in the long run.

Reacting to the criticism of Bairstow’s dismissal last week, Stuart Broad said, “he could be happy that he committed to a certain way of playing and didn’t alter that.”

You could say the same about this knock.

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If you want to be highly regarded as a wicketkeeper-batter, one of the smartest things you can do is not actually keep wicket in a whole load of Test matches.

At what point do you become a wicketkeeper? How frequently do you have to don pads and gloves and chunter away relentlessly to be considered a proper specialist in that weird squatty role?

There was a spell a few years back when a bunch of people started referring to Ollie Pope as a wicketkeeper – England selectors mainly.

Let’s be clear: Ollie Pope was not and is not a wicketkeeper. Ollie Pope is a batter who has occasionally kept wicket. He may own a pair of gloves, but that is only because he is the kind of posh kid who owns all the equipment for every last thing he is even faintly interested in. Ollie Pope has a snowboard. Ollie Pope has a Gretsch County Gentleman. Ollie Pope has wicketkeeping gloves.

How do we know Ollie Pope is not a wicketkeeper? Because at the time of writing, Ollie Pope still hasn’t stumped anyone in professional cricket. There are many ways to put together your definition of wicketkeeper, but we put it to you that at least one stumping is a prerequisite.

Maybe if it’s your professional debut and you’re keeping wicket in that game, we can give you a bit of leeway. And we suppose stumpings aren’t always that common, so it might take a handful of matches before you got that first one. But if you’re Ollie Pope and you’ve played over 100 matches as a pro and you’ve never stumped anyone, you are not a wicketkeeper. You are a glove owner.

There have been a few players down the years who have progressed from glove ownership to being fully-fledged wicketkeepers and this is where things get a bit tricksy. Where is the line? What other factors are we looking at?

We don’t want to overcomplicate this. We’d argue there are really just two main, overlapping types of genuine wicketkeeper.

1. The player who currently keeps wicket most of the time
2. The player who has done a lot of wicketkeeping

If a player keeps wicket more than half the time, it seems fair to consider them a wicketkeeper. Equally, if a player no longer keeps wicket, but previously did so for several years and has a pretty big body of glovework behind them, we’re happy to consider that person a wicketkeeper too.

That’s not precisely what we’re digging into today though. Today we’re looking at five players who people widely consider to be Test wicketkeepers, who quite often didn’t actually keep wicket.

Jos Buttler – a Test wicketkeeper 65% of the time

37 matches as keeper, 20 as an outfielder

Despite his memorably pioneering work as a specialist number seven batter, Jos Buttler has actually kept wicket for England rather frequently.

He’s mostly been okay too. Certainly better than some would have you believe. Not brilliant. Not 100 per cent reliable. Bit shonky against the spinners. But more okay than he usually gets credit for. The fact he often gets pushed towards the batter-who-keeps pigeonhole is probably more to do with longstanding wicketkeeping tropes than his actual aptitude for the job.

In Tests, Buttler averages 29.60 as wicketkeeper with one hundred, and 35.68 without the gloves, also with one hundred.

Weird closing fact: Buttler has way more professional stumpings to his name than either Ben Foakes or Jonny Bairstow. That’s in large part down to the nature of limited overs cricket, but it’s still the kind of thing you might like to post on Twitter next time you’re having a dumb argument with someone about those three players.

Alec Stewart – a Test wicketkeeper 62% of the time

82 matches as keeper, 51 as an outfielder

Stewart is well-known for being the ‘better batter’ option in the Alec Stewart v Jack Russell 1990s wicketkeeping tussle. He’s also a good example of how keeping can sometimes impact a player’s batting.

> The 1990s-est England Test XI

The Gaffer averaged 34.92 as a wicketkeeper with six hundreds, but 46.70 as a specialist batter with nine hundreds.

For what it’s worth, Russell averaged 27.10 in 54 Tests with two hundreds. We haven’t really investigated this thoroughly, but being as it was the 1990s we know for a fact the various batters who played instead of him definitely didn’t average 39 – which is what was apparently needed to make up the 12 runs the team shed each time it put Stewart on leaping and jabbering duties.

Jonny Bairstow – a Test wicketkeeper 59% of the time

49 matches as keeper, 34 as an outfielder

There are part-time wicketkeepers, occasional wicketkeepers and out-and-out wicketkeepers. And then there’s Jonny Bairstow, for whom being a wicketkeeper is a part of his identity on a level more profound than probably even he understands. England have at times been guilty of not really properly appreciating that fact.

David Bairstow played four Tests for England (which was enough for him to get that all-important stumping). His son has so far kept wicket in 49 Tests.

> Buttler, Bairstow and Foakes – England’s embarrassment of adequacy

Bairstow’s record is currently the reverse of Stewart’s. He has averaged 37.37 when playing as England’s wicketkeeper, with five tons; and 30.45 as a specialist batter, with three tons.

Brendon McCullum – a Test wicketkeeper 51% of the time

52 matches as keeper, 49 as an outfielder

Just as a measure of the inaccuracy of some of our perceptions, you probably think of Brendon McCullum as both a wicketkeeper and a captain – yet he played in 100 Test matches when he wasn’t entrusted with both those roles. Captain-keeper was actually something he did just the once, against England in 2013. (Jonny Bairstow also played in that match, but didn’t keep wicket.)

> Brendon McCullum and Angelo Mathews: Conjoined Lord Megachiefs of Gold 2014

McCullum was captain in 31 Tests and wicketkeeper in 52. He averaged 34.18 as a stumper (five hundreds) and 42.94 as a batter (seven hundreds).

He also kept wicket in 184 one-day internationals, which gives you a pretty good idea why our perspectives can sometimes end up skewed.

Kumar Sangakkara – a Test wicketkeeper 36% of the time

48 matches as keeper, 86 as an outfielder

Jayawardene kept wicket in more Test matches than Sangakkara. That is a 100 per cent true fact that only becomes believable when we reveal that we are talking about Prasanna Jayawardene.

Even so, a surprisingly large proportion of people just didn’t seem to notice that their all-time favourite wicketkeeper-batter only actually kept wicket in a third of the Test matches he played. Granted, that was still a lot of matches, but it does mean that Sangakkara played more Test matches without the gloves than Ian Chappell, Martin Crowe, Denis Compton, Len Hutton and Michael Vaughan. Steve Smith will catch him pretty soon – but he hasn’t yet.

Sangakkara is a rare player whose reputation has been positively burnished by multitasking. Normally any attempt at all-rounderism only serves to double the criticism you attract and this is especially true for wicketkeepers, who are routinely slaughtered for dropping a catch when they’re batting well or for making a duck when their keeping is slick and polished. Sangakkara, in contrast, is falsely perceived as a man who made dozens of Test hundreds while playing as a wicketkeeper.

Don’t get us wrong – his record is extraordinary. But of his 38 Test hundreds, only seven came in matches when he was wicketkeeping. His impressive batting average as keeper (40.48) also soars to an outright ludicrous 66.78 when he played as a specialist batsman.

People think that the impressive thing about Sangakkara is that he made so many runs when he was a wicketkeeper. The far more incredible feat was just how many he made when he wasn’t.

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When we think about Jonny Bairstow and how England have used him over the years, it reminds us of a moment in Airplane!

There was a time back in 2019 when England dropped Jonny Bairstow and tried to frame it as a kick up the arse that might potentially drive him to new heights. (Hell of a kick.)

That noble ambition was only slightly undermined by the fact they’d renewed his central contract three days earlier. So it wasn’t really a kick up the arse at all. Not one delivered with any venom anyway.

“He worked particularly hard and earned his way back into this team,” explained Chris Silverwood when Bairstow returned to the England squad for the very next tour having played precisely zero cricket in the interim.

He played one Test on that tour, made 1 and 9, and was promptly rested (not dropped) for the next one.

There’s a complex graphic just begging to be made charting Bairstow’s in-out, wicketkeeper-not-wicketkeeper, batting-at-every-position-from-three-to-eight status throughout the course of his Test career. It would be interesting to see the greatest number of successive matches in one fixed role. (We think it might be when he strung together seven matches as a wicketkeeping number seven in 2017.)

Bairstow is currently playing his third match in a row as a number six batter. He has hit hundreds in two of those games. Things are going pretty damn well. And this is where we think of Airplane!

The bit we think of comes late in the film when Captain Rex Kramer is trying to talk Ted Striker through landing the plane. He’s in the control tower, running things from there, doing everything he can to avert catastrophe.

As Striker nears the runway, one of the air traffic controllers says to Kramer: “Maybe we ought to turn on the searchlights now.”

“No,” replies Kramer, melodramatically. “That’s just what they’ll be expecting us to do.”

This just seems the perfect summary of how England have managed Bairstow over the years. They have always tried to keep him guessing, even when doing so has been utterly self-defeating.

Sure, things are going swimmingly right now and England have a number six knocking out hundreds two matches in three. But there’s no need to get too comfortable. We all know we’re only a strained Foakes hamstring or a Dan Lawrence pair away from mixing things up again.

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One of our favourite things about Jonny Bairstow Test hundreds – second only to their existence really – is how he celebrates them. Jonny Bairstow is a pretty fiery hundred-celebrator.

Before today, the last time Bairstow made a Test ton was in November 2018 in Sri Lanka. On that occasion he celebrated so furiously his head vibrated.

His reaction to reaching three figures on that occasion was sufficiently intimidating that we saw fit to (a) measure it on the “imagine this bloke is walking directly towards you in a pub” scale and (b) put it up against a Virat Kohli hundred celebration to try and work out who celebrated more angrily.

Bairstow’s latest hundred celebration, in Sydney, was not quite so angry. In fact it was so becalmed that for a brief horrifying moment we feared he wouldn’t roar at all.

Stage 1: Controlled

This is what he did first. From the nose up, he was still quite tense and focused. Below that he was starting to work out what had happened. You can see his tongue peeping out, attempting to gather information.

Stage 2: Happy

Wait, what? The sheer cognitive overload of the situation then led Bairstow down a very strange road indeed. He smiled. Beamed even. It was very un-Bairstow

Stage 3: Furious anger

Fortunately, that emotional state was short-lived. Soon enough Bairstow’s sporting reflexes kicked in and he let fly a huge bestial roar.

Furious hundred celebration form is temporary. Furious hundred celebration class is permanent.

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Last week we suggested that the adaptability of Jonny Bairstow and Moeen Ali was a key reason why they had become yo-yos for England. There are two sides to this.

Firstly, the fact that the two men can each perform so many ‘roles’ means that Test openings materialise more frequently for them than for other players.

Secondly, when they’re in form, the temptation to employ them to plug a gap elsewhere in the side becomes just too great and before you know it, they don’t know who they are any more, they’re out of form and they’re dropped again.

You could almost feel it happen on day three at Lord’s.

Bairstow’s fifty was further evidence of diminished fragility after his encouraging showing in the first Test. (Solidity would be pushing it.) This didn’t feel too significant in itself, until a flakey drive from Jos Buttler, at which point you could sense a contingency plan being formed.

Then Moeen Ali came in and batted like a prince for a little bit. “Wait!” someone shouted before he could edge one to slip. “I’ve an innovative leftfield idea about how we could address the seemingly unresolvable niggling weaknesses at the top of the order!”

Probably neither of these yo-yo tricks will happen this time around. But you can see how they do.

If there’s one thing we know about yo-yos, it’s that if you send one out, it tends to come back. If we know another thing about yo-yos, it’s that sometimes they get all tangled when they’re fully extended and don’t actually come back and then you have to spend ages unknotting them. What this means with regards to Moeen Ali, we’re not entirely sure.

Rotation policies aside, England have certain Test players who just get picked and it’s that simple. Joe Root and Ben Stokes get picked. Taken over a sufficiently long timespan, that’s actually about it.

Taken over a shorter timespan, most of the top order batsmen are consistently picked. James Anderson is generally picked too.

Recovery, prioritisation of certain matches and tactical deployment tend to blur the reasons underpinning non-selection for most of the other quick bowlers, while a reluctance to unbalance the side by playing any kind of spin bowler tends to do for Jack Leach.

Then there are the yo-yos. These are players who aren’t merely edged out every once in a while. Instead they oscillate wildly between being sure-fire picks and outcasts. They come and go and come and go and stay gone but then come back before going again. These players are unusual in that they are definitely, unequivocally dropped – completely left out of the squad for an entire tour – before being miraculously restored when the stars align again.

England’s two standout yo-yos are Moeen Ali and Jonny Bairstow, but you could certainly argue for the inclusion of Jos Buttler and Chris Woakes in this category too.

A common attribute seems to be these players’ adaptability – their three-dimensionality, you might say. The ability to bowl or keep wicket in addition to batting means that each of these players can be earmarked for a greater number of ‘roles’. If you had the will and an awful lot a lot of time on your hands, you could create a magnificently informative spreadsheet detailing what exactly England had in mind for each of these players at different points in time and how they were measured according to those criteria.

Remember that time Jonny Bairstow was DEFINITELY England’s Test number three? Or that time he was DEFINITELY a specialist middle order batsman? Or that time he was DEFINITELY the wicketkeeper for the foreseeable future? Remember that time he was DEFINITELY dropped from the Test team only to earn a Test contract three days later?

Similarly, if you’ve got some random job that needs doing, why not see if Moeen Ali fancies stepping in?

As our Hundreds and Five-Fors rating proves, there are countless ways Moeen can add to a side. Sadly, as a corollary of that, there seem to be just as many ways in which he will fail to live up to selectors’ specific expectations at any given time meaning yet another dropping is rarely far away.

We like Moeen. We enjoy watching him play. The best thing about him being a yo-yo is that there’s always a good chance he’ll be back. The worst thing about him being a yo-yo is that whenever he does play his final Test, there’s a very good chance we won’t actually realise it at the time.

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Image: Yo-yo, CC licensed by Miguel via Flickr.

Our rule with white ball cricket is that if you’re bearing down on a World Cup, you pay attention to that particular format, and then immediately stop paying attention afterwards.

The competition currently known as the ICC Men’s T20 World Cup is due to take place in October 2021. Being as the following edition is due to take place 12 months after that, it’s very much shortest format time. 50-over cricket isn’t really going to start seeming relevant again for quite some time.

We should probably try and get a handle on things, shouldn’t we?

The Jonny Bairstow situation

One of the big challenges with all white ball series – 20-over or 50-over – is remembering anything that happened in the one before.

For example, the big talking point ahead of England’s tour of South Africa was that Jonny Bairstow is no longer opening and has been dropped down the order to four.

While this dramatic move is apparently a source of great controversy, it’s quite hard to get worked up about when you weren’t really sure what position he’d been batting at anyway. Bairstow did indeed open in T20 during the summer, but then he’d batted at three when England toured South Africa way back in February of this year.

Batting one place lower in the same format in the same country in the same year really doesn’t seem that radical a move.

Do you remember that previous series? We absolutely 100 per cent do not. After checking the archives, we see that Moeen Ali hit a nice six, which sort of vaguely rings a bell.

Yesterday Bairstow hit 86 not out off 48-balls in his first match at his new batting position. Everyone agrees that this proves something. There is however a difference of opinion as to exactly what it proves.

Either it proves that he’s great and should be opening or it proves that he’s great at four and should be batting at four.

Our opinion is that England should look for a way of getting him to perform both roles. Perhaps invent a Bonny Jairstow and ask him to wear glasses. Bit of an issue if he ends up having to bat with himself, but these are the kinds of challenges you face when these big world tournaments hove into view.