The debate over whether Jonny Bairstow might be taken out of the firing line at Old Trafford next week never looked like much of a runner. Ben Stokes and Brendon McCullum have, after all, made plainly clear which direction they expect their team to be heading when the shooting starts.
Sure enough, on Tuesday morning, England moved swiftly to nip in the bud what might have been a week of speculation, naming an unchanged squad for Manchester’s Fourth Test, with the Yorkshireman as the sole wicketkeeping option.
The speed of the announcement told you that the idea of a recall for Ben Foakes was never given much consideration, much to the dismay of one half of the ‘keeping culture war.
The case for Foakes, which the 30-year-old’s many advocates were no doubt ready to ramp up this week, is clear: Bairstow has squandered eight chances of varying difficultly this summer so far and, while it is true that Foakes, inarguably a better gloveman, may not have taken the lot, it is also fair to point out that the Surrey man could conceivably have contributed more with the bat, supposedly the other half of the trade-off. Bairstow has 141 runs in six innings so far in these Ashes at an average of 23.50, a figure lower than Foakes’s career average, home average and average in the Bazball era (though, notably, he has never faced this attack).
Nor, however, should anyone be surprised by this point that the argument continues to be ignored. England nailed their colours to the mast early this summer, leaving Foakes out of a large squad to face Ireland in the sole pre-Ashes warm-up when they could have kept their options open by calling up both contenders. They might even have kept Foakes around as the versatile spare batter ahead of Dan Lawrence, who has been filling the role since the New Zealand tour but is still yet to play under the new regime, even after Ollie Pope’s injury. Tellingly, they did not.
England, clearly, are all-in on Bairstow as wicketkeeper and, like a man settling down at a roulette table to double stakes on red until the mortgage is repaid, have come too far into these Ashes to turn back now. Of course, they could technically cut their losses here, but where would be the fun or fortune in that? It is the promise of a windfall in runs that, understandably after last summer, has Stokes and McCullum persisting with Plan A.
There is a certain irony here, too. While the yearning is for Foakes’s reliability behind the stumps, there is every chance that the bigger upside to his hypothetical return would come in unlocking the best of Bairstow with the bat. The 33-year-old’s career averages with and without the gloves are almost identical, but his struggles in this series seem to have affected his batting, his sole innings of note so far being a run-a-ball 78 on the opening day at Edgbaston, before he had yet kept wicket.
Perhaps, were Stokes fit to bowl, now would be the time to bring Foakes back and re-gift Bairstow with the freedom to bat as a specialist, as was the case throughout his golden summer 12 months ago. As it is, though, the extra bowler balance that England landed on in Leeds — and, given Ollie Robinson’s back spasm, thank heavens they did — looks set to remain the blueprint in Manchester.
There, the hope will be that Bairstow, benefiting from a break, more practice and some distance from the Lord’s hoo-ha, will be somewhere closer to the ‘keeper he has been in the past, still not on Foakes’s level but some way beyond his form of this summer so far.
The only certainty is that if he is not, the calls for Foakes will grow ever louder but, in all likelihood, will continue to fall on deaf ears.
