Jonny Bairstow has gloriously fast hands when it comes to being one of the world’s most in-form batsmen. But they deserted him in his wicketkeeping duties, and it’s not entirely his fault
Jarrod Kimber at Lord's10-Jun-2016Jonny Bairstow is on his knees, clutching for the ball. Instead he clutches in vain as it bounces off his glove. It’s not an edge, but a throw from Stuart Broad. It’s low and bounces in front of Bairstow, but far enough away that it sits up well. But Bairstow never looks like collecting it. The next ball is a single to fine leg, the soft throw comes in on the half volley. Bairstow puts down one hand to grab it, but he fumbles it again. Two balls later, a ball is under-armed above his head. Somehow he fumbles again.In the three balls that have come to him, he’s taken a hat-trick of fumbles.Lord’s is a bad ground for wicketkeeping. The ball swings late. It dips. It isn’t easy. Then there is a slope as well. The world’s best wicketkeepers have often looked untidy here. But they have worked it out.Prior to today, Jonny Bairstow’s professional experience of wicketkeeping at Lord’s amounted to 78 overs. His most recent stint had come in a Pro40 contest in 2011. He dropped a catch today. Jonny Bairstow is not one of the world’s best wicketkeepers.That game in which Bairstow last kept at Lord’s, he made 114. That is why he is here now. Them runs. Lots of runs. His technique might still worry some, there might be a question as to how much luck he has, but no one can question his runs.His wicketkeeping, you can question that.Although when it was questioned at Headingley, after he dropped a catch off the low-in confidence-Steven Finn he said, with the air of a man trying his very best: “If you’d like to give me an explanation of what you think that was, I’d love to know about it because there’s a lot of things that people talk about that. I’d love to know about it, because obviously they’ve kept wicket for however many years and know all the technicalities of it. If people want to go into the intricacies of keeping wicket, I think it would be quite interesting.”Bairstow is right. People know very little about wicketkeeping. Books about how to bat or bowl are printed every year. If it is a complete book about coaching, there will be a section on wicketkeeping. But how many wicketkeeping specialist coaching books are there? Chances are, you don’t own CrickiTeacher: The Art of Wicket-keeping by Stephen Pope, or Major Ronald Thomas Staynforth’s seminal classic, Wicket-Keeping. And if you don’t own them, chances are you don’t own a book devoted to one of cricket’s most important skills, as they seem to be two of a very, very, rare breed.
Cricket data is naked when it comes to wicketkeeping. Missed chances are barely recorded around the world, and counting byes has never truly worked when working out the class of a wicketkeeper
Before play, the cricket charity Chance to Shine were handing out copies of a cricket “bucket list”, including such must-do-at-least-once gems as “take a crowd catch” and “go to a Test in fancy dress”. One of the list items was, “fill in as a last-minute wicketkeeper”. That is not quite how modern cricket works, but it is the direction it does seem to be heading.Michael Bates, the former Hampshire wicketkeeper, is only 24 years old. But he is now a wicketkeeping coach, according to his Twitter profile, rather than a player, because while Bates can wicket-keep to a highlight-reel level, his batting isn’t up to the modern standard. Don Tallon, perhaps the greatest wicketkeeper of all time, only ever batted as high as seven in one innings in his career, and averaged 17.13 in 21 Tests. Since the war, according to Lookatthedata.blogspot.co.uk, the amount of runs produced by wicketkeepers in Tests has risen from 6% to 10%. Wicketkeepers have slowly and surely been turned into batsmen. We all know that. And the actual skill of wicketkeeping is struggling as a consequence.Modern wicketkeeping involves batsmen with fast hands, all of them tremendous athletes, diving and hoping. They are point fielders with gloves. Some don’t run up to the stumps when the ball is played into the field, thus missing the chance to complete run outs. Others don’t expect the ball to be missed, and are caught looking silly when it is. And almost none of them use their feet.It is not Bairstow’s fault his keeping is not better than it is. There is no doubt he works hard, he consults experts, and he works with the ECB keeping coach, Bruce French, a lot. He is fit, hungry, and he wants to be a success. And because of that, he might be. But he isn’t right now, and that isn’t his fault, that is the selectors’ fault.It is the England selectors, and selectors the world over, who have turned wicketkeepers into fast heavy handed allrounders. The wicketkeeper usually touches the ball more than anyone else, they take around 20% of the total dismissals in modern Test cricket. That is four wickets a game, the same as a top-class Test bowler.Yet teams rarely pick a batting allrounder as a frontline bowler, unless they have back-up in another couple of batting allrounders. There is no back-up for the keeper (unless you’re the Sri Lanka team), you are on your own, in a position in which you don’t create many chances so you have to accept the ones that come your way. So we have, as a sport, given away one of the most important positions in a cricket side to point fielders. Why? Because cricket doesn’t rate wicketkeeping, it rates runs.Jonny Bairstow dropped an chance early in Sri Lanka’s innings•AFPCricket data is naked when it comes to wicketkeeping. Missed chances are barely recorded around the world, and counting byes has never truly worked when working out the class of a wicketkeeper. And chances created by wicketkeepers isn’t even a conversation yet. Cricket’s lack of data means runs win.The scenario wasn’t so different when Matt Prior was picked for England. No one would say Prior was James Foster, but he was a top-class batsman who could make a Gilly-esque impact. Early on the second day, Prior was up on the balcony with his old team, watching the man who has inherited his job make 167 not out. The highest score by an English keeper in a Test match in England.In 2013-14 at Sydney, Prior watched Bairstow again. This time it was during a wicketkeeping drill he took him through before his second Test with the gloves. Prior had Bairstow on the mat that keepers use to practise against spinners. The balls hit his hands, they had the softness of a tank filled with anvils, and the balls ricocheted accordingly. As he ran off to collect the many balls he had missed, Prior shook his head.It was the same kind of shake the bowlers gave in South Africa, especially at Centurion where Bairstow missed chances from Stephen Cook and then Hashim Amla as the pair compiled a matchwinning partnership on the first day.Today it was Woakes who was shaking his head. Well he would have, but he was so put off by what he had just seen he didn’t know whether to perform a tea pot, point and shout, or kick the air and swear like he had in Centurion. Woakes has 13 Test wickets to date. He has also had five dropped chances, three of them from Bairstow.Bairstow has missed four chances this series. Three catches and one stumping. According to CricViz England are -153 in the field. Bairstow is -109 on his own. If the average batsman makes 32 runs, he’s -128 by that measure. All this after he had adopted goalkeeping practice that he said had improved his keeping.If it has improved it, perhaps that is because he was starting from such a low base. In 2013 Bairstow was keeping for Yorkshire at The Oval, but his glovework was so poor it seemed his job wasn’t to stop the ball, but to parry it and then run off to collect it.Today, people fumbled for excuses much as Bairstow had fumbled for the ball. Lord’s is a bad ground for wicketkeeping, you know. The ball swings late, you know. It dips, you know. It isn’t easy, you know. Then there is a slope as well, you know.Not to mention he is still learning. The last time he played a first-class game at Lord’s, Andrew Hodd was keeping for Yorkshire, and he is still early in his career. You know.But that catch, you know.When Woakes hit that area just short of a length at a good pace, when the ball bounced well and took the finest of edges, and went through to Bairstow, it just didn’t seem like there was an excuse. It didn’t seem like it was possible for a Test keeper to drop such an offering.If you were in a catching competition, and you had to take ten catches to win 100 dollars, and you dropped this catch, even as a fat amateur who hadn’t put the gloves on for years, you’d never forgive yourself.And not only did Bairstow not take it with those glorious fast batting hands, those 167 not out hands, they barely got near it.Bairstow didn’t shake his head, he had a nervous smile, and then buried his head in his arms. Had his head been a chance, he might have dropped it.