Eoin Morgan has tipped the “relentless attitude” of Jonny Bairstow to come to the fore on Wednesday as England make one change to their batting lineup for the Champions Trophy semi-final with Pakistan in Cardiff.
The England captain stopped short of naming his XI before a toss he admitted he hopes to lose – a reused pitch at Sophia Gardens is behind that – but could do little to play down the fact Jason Roy has been dropped after the misfiring opener played a minimal part in a training session and Bairstow was the first batsman in the nets.
“We’re getting to the business end of the tournament and we need to produce results,” said Morgan, whose side are vying for a place in Sunday’s final at The Oval and a chance to win their first 50-over global title. “We need results and if that means somebody misses out, it’s unfortunate. But for the team’s sake we need to get results. We want to win this tournament.”
On Bairstow, he added: “I believe he’s a fantastic batsman. I think his best attribute, certainly in white ball cricket over the last year and a half, has been his relentless attitude to score runs regardless of the situation. Guys on the sidelines can get a little bit upset, and that can affect their performance when the chance comes. But that doesn’t seem to affect Jonny.”
Bairstow has flourished at short notice before, having twice come into the side at the 11th hour in the past two years – against New Zealand at Durham in 2015 and during the Pakistan series at Headingley last year – and picked up the man of the match award with scores of 83 not out and 61 respectively.
The one unknown will be how he fares against the new white ball. He has opened for Yorkshire in the Royal London Cup this season, hitting a career-best 174 from 113 balls against Durham, but not at international level. It was a point the Pakistan coach, Mickey Arthur, highlighted.
“I was particularly worried that Roy hadn’t fired yet because I think he’s very close to something quite good. So if he’s not playing, that wouldn’t be too bad,” Arthur said. “Bairstow came off the canvas against us last year – he wasn’t supposed to play a half an hour before the game.
“The only thing I will say, I know Bairstow has opened at county level, but he’s never done it internationally, and I think that’s a different ballgame.”
Morgan, who had backed Roy for the entire tournament, highlighted the threat of Pakistan’s bowlers after wins over South Africa and Sri Lanka secured their place in the knockout round.
Pakistan won in Cardiff last year, also when chasing down 303, albeit at the end of a 4-1 series defeat that saw England hit a world record 444 for three at Trent Bridge. “On their day, they can beat any team in the world. They beat the No1 side [South Africa] and are very dangerous. They have variation but certainly we do have plans against all of them,” Morgan said.
If both camps appeared in relaxed mood then these are nervous times for the International Cricket Council – the tournament organiser which runs the ticketing – and the match host, Glamorgan. Around 5,000 tickets for the 14,100 capacity at Sophia Gardens were sold to India fans before the identity of the semi-finalists was known.
Around 3,000 of these have since been returned and resold but bare patches in the crowd at a venue that is yet to produce a full house would be a bad look for the governing body.
It would also not particularly help the case of a county hoping to secure major matches in the upcoming international allocation and be a host venue for the new English Twenty20 tournament from 2020 onwards.
Arthur seeks elusive dose of consistency
Mickey Arthur has admitted Pakistan’s unpredictable cricket often forces him to reach for the “chill pills” as he strives to make them more consistent; today’s semi-final opponents, England, are his blueprint.
The Pakistan coach, who has coached his native South Africa and Australia, could be seen going through an emotional mangle during Pakistan’s three-wicket win over Sri Lanka on Monday, a helter-skelter run chase that has given the world’s eighth-ranked side a shot at Sunday’s Champions Trophy final at The Oval.
Having been written off after their opening 124-run DLS defeat to India – a wretched performance of fielding errors and callow batting – Arthur believes they have bounced “back off the canvas” through a pace attack that has harnessed lateral movement and felled both South Africa and Sri Lanka en route to today.
Asked how the job compares to previous roles, Arthur joked: “I’ve just been buying a lot more chill pills. But I don’t want us to be unpredictable. As a head coach, you want the team to have structure and consistency. Unpredictability, as a coaching staff, we don’t like. But if we put our best game forward and do the basics well, we give ourselves a chance.”
Pakistan’s bowling will challenge England’s batsmen. Bringing in Junaid Khan, the Lancashire left-armer with stacks of English nous, for the injured and perhaps spent Wahab Riaz has transformed them, and his five wickets in two games freeinghas freed up Mohammad Amir and Hasan Ali.
Hasan, the slippery right-armer, has harnessed reverse in the middle overs – his two in two balls against South Africa, including the detonation of Wane Parnell’s off stump, are among the tournament highlights – and has seven victims to date, while Amir is perhaps even returning to the hostility seen before his infamous five-year absence from cricket.
Their Bbatting remains flaky – Arthur conceded the middle order is a headache – but one bright spark has been the opener Fakhar Zaman, who has made a total of 81 runs in his first two international innings at a strike-rate of 137, offering fast starts in their two fraught run chases thus far.
Arthur is impressed with the 27-year-old as he looks to build a side for the 2019 World Cup in the manner of England’s surge over the past two years.
He said: “The young guys [Fakhar and Hasan] coming in have taken to it as a duck to water, which has been great. They’ve come in with a great attitude. They want to learn. They want to work hard, and we’re getting some results out of them, which is fantastic news.
“ I think we learned a hell of a lot from the England series [a 4-1 defeat last year]. We actually went back after that and assessed where we needed to be, and we kind of copied the blueprint that England had used a little bit. You know, you’ve got to have the players to do that, but we certainly tried to revamp our team as best we could.”
Arthur, who was pondering whether to push his captain, Sarfraz Ahmed, and the experienced Shoaib Malik higher up the order and bring back the leg-spinner Shadab Khan, put Pakistan’s upturn in fortunes down to “mature conversations” that would not have been possible when he began the role last year.
He added: “I sit here incredibly proud of every one of those guys in the dressing room because I know how hard they’ve worked how hurt they were after their Indian clash. And for them to have come back and dusted themselves off is a really good effort,” he said.
“We certainly didn’t want to be just making up the numbers in this competition, and we’ve shown that we weren’t. Now we need to go one step further more and never be satisfied. That’s a mantra of ours. We want to end up in London for the final.”
