Kevin Pietersen announced recently that he needed to watch a batsman for only five minutes to know if he could not just play but play, if he truly deserves – the implication was left hanging – to inherit the England shirt worn with such distinction by KP himself. In which case Pietersen will have feasted hungrily on the brief but wonderfully luminous glimpses of Tom Westley’s shot-making brio during a damp, grey, gripping passage of Test cricket on a rain-ruined third day.
England batted again just before lunch, 178 runs ahead on first innings. Already the skies were closing in. Alastair Cook didn’t last long, removed by a sensational delivery from Morne Morkel that speared in and leapt away, opening the left-hander up and detonating off stump, the kind of dismissal that deserves not one wicket but one and a half, and a consolatory asterisk against the batsman’s name.
At which point Westley walked out to join Keaton Jennings, with a sense of something malevolent in the skies, a whisper of nibble and nip on a dull, slightly clammy afternoon. Westley has an endearing manner even as he walks out to bat, slight but surprisingly tall at 6ft 2in. Even watching him take guard is a pleasant visual relief in an England era of crabby top order left-handers. Here, he offered something else too. The right-hander faced 38 balls in the first innings en route to an agreeably forthright 25, a knock that provided evidence not just of his boundary-hitting aggression and a fine leave on off stump; but of angles and rhythms – scoring areas in front of square, front-foot attacking shots – that the England top three has notably lacked in recent times.
A great deal of discussion has already focused on the apparent perils of Westley’s technique, the decision to set himself up on off stump and accept the risks of playing to his obvious strengths on “the man’s side”. But watch any of the many Westley highlight reels sculling about on the internet and it becomes clear he can drive with real panache too, as he did here right from the start, drawing a range of increasingly fond gurgles and sighs around this seething urban bowl of a ground.
Westley was lucky to miss his first ball, a brute of a thing from Morkel that jagged past the outside edge. Next he faced a hangdog Vernon Philander, risen bravely from his hospital bed after suffering a stomach infection. Here Philander dragged himself gamely to the wicket, waddle a little more pronounced, lengths for once a little fuddled.
Philander’s fourth ball was slightly over-pitched on off stump. Westley leaned forward and drove it with a lovely severity through mid-off, not leaning on the ball or easing it away, but spanking it with real elan. For all the hoicks and paddles and swats, some things don’t change. The cover drive is still the most pleasing shot in cricket, one that brings that involuntary sigh of pleasure from spectators, that suggests above all a kind of authenticity.
Philander over-pitched again in his next over. This time he was driven straighter by Westley, elbow even higher, a shot of chasteningly perfect balance and severity, as though responding in that moment to the suggestion his dismissal in the first innings while driving with a strangled follow-through was indication of a more insidious flaw.
Two balls later Philander was flipped through leg-side with a kind of head-shaking ease. Drives, yes. But you still can’t bowl to me there, old boy.
Westley’s best drive came a little later as Chris Morris over-pitched and was stroked through wide mid-off. It was a shot of complete abandon, every part of the batsman’s body committed to that free, straight swing of the bat, the kind of shot you dream of playing on your Test debut in front of a full-house Saturday crowd.
At this point the thought occurred that these were perhaps the most elegant, winning, dreamy England cover drives since Ian Bell last played.
There is a right-handed lineage here. Michael Vaughan drove the ball through the covers with a wonderful whip-crack elegance, another tall, slim, top-order player, with something ascetic and scholarly about his strokes, the air at the wicket of a stern young clergyman administering the Sunday school switch.
For Westley, the cover drive is an obvious necessity, a corollary of the leg-side whip. This is a No3 batsman who presents his front pad on off stump like a bullseye. Little wonder you’re going to get pretty good at driving, just as strengths can often develop out of a perceived batting weakness.
John Crawley and Jonathan Trott were leg-side players who developed a surprisingly efficient clump through cover.
Westley still has plenty to do here. The wrong kind of dismissal in the second innings – driving too loosely or whipping to leg – will perhaps raise a little more talk about his method. What is clear is he leaves well on off stump. And that, above all, he brings a front-foot aggression that England’s top-order has lacked, and which illuminated – briefly, but perhaps just long enough – even the grimmest mid-summer south London day.
