I remember watching Jonny Bairstow and Ben Stokes batting together, pounding it all over the ground and thinking to myself this really was the start of a new era. It was 2016 in Cape Town, when the pair put on 399 and hit 13 sixes between them. Trevor Bayliss was a relatively recent appointment as England head coach and we were seeing the impact of his arrival and maybe also the effect of the Indian Premier League.
Fast-forward six years and we are at the start of another new era and everyone is talking about the same two batters after the pair of them – and particularly Bairstow on the final afternoon – swung that fantastic second Test against New Zealand in England’s direction.
