Happy Burns day. England’s left-handed opener faced the first ball and the last ball on the second day of this first Ashes Test. In between Rory Burns wafted and whooshed, hit a few, edged a few more and batted at times with all the graceful serenity of a man trying to force his way head-first through a privet hedge.
At the end of which Burns finished a captivating day on 125 not out, his first hundred for England, and an innings that already seems likely to garland and indeed define his career as a cricketer.
As the sun moved steadily across the sky, only one thing seemed to be happening at Edgbaston. Australia bowled to Burns. Burns waited, squinted, squatted suddenly as though fighting a bout of gastric nerves, and repelled the attack.
He played horribly at times, did not care and played horribly some more. The ball passed his outside edge at least 30 times. It was urgent, scrappy, dogged and by the end an impossibly precious innings for England’s hopes in this series.
There was also a nobility in Australia’s persistence. Bowling all day to Rory Burns: this is both an activity and a statement of fact. Australia were unstinting. Pat Cummins bowled with wonderful heart. The fielding levels never dropped. It was gripping, in the way only this strange, absorbing sport can be. There was even something deeply true to himself about the way Burns brought up that first Test hundred from his 224th ball. Nathan Lyon bowled on middle stump. Burns nudge-plonked it into the leg side and sprinted to the other end, already removing his helmet and punching the air as Joel Wilson signalled for a review, the return having shaved the stumps.
It has been a strange couple of days for the starchiest of all the formats. If a passing group of Martians, Venusians or Americans had chosen this first Test to conduct a case study into Test cricket their chief conclusions would be that the way to score runs is to flinch, twitch and shiver around the crease like a startled squirrel.
At times at Edgbaston it was tempting to conclude England have found their own Steve Smith, although with Smith the idea is always there of an ascetic purity at the heart of his fidgeting. Not so with Burns who, even as he strikes the ball, still appears to be fighting his way through a swarm of midges, while in the process of realising that his shoes are on fire.
Nothing, though, can detract from the value of this innings. Burns came here with his England career teetering on the edge. In midweek he had been back to his roots down at Surrey’s training ground at New Malden. There he could be seen hitting balls in the company of Neil Stewart, brother of Alec, and a straight-talking, mentor-ish figure to that generation of Surrey players. Even here Burns had edged and scratched and plinked his throw downs: perfect preparation, it turned out, for edging and scratching and plinking his way to a vital Ashes hundred.
At the start all eyes had been glued to the former Whitgift schoolboy opening in his first Ashes Test. Naturally this was not Burns but the more upright Jason Roy. Coming up through the Surrey age groups it was Roy who was the star, the flashing blade. Burns was a wicket-keeper and occasionally an off-spinner. There were no England camps or A Tours but the runs continued to churn in county cricket, right up to the unignorable peaks of last season.
Roy looked in no bother at all until the moment he was out, pushing at a good ball from James Pattinson. As Burns rebuilt with Joe Root there was an early moment of peril as Cummins struck him on the helmet. After lunch he should have been given out lbw to Nathan Lyon. Australia did not review.
And early on it took a while to adjust to the movements of the Burns head. As the bowler runs in he rotates his neck as he appears to be looking beyond mid-on. It is a conscious tick, Burns trying to line up his stronger eye, his left, with the far edge of the stumps. At times he looked as though he was about to turn his head full circle, like an owl or a demonically possessed 1970s child. There was some talk of Burns playing the ball a little closer to himself. Only he will really know the extent of this. What is certain is he knows how to make runs, finding a surprising power out of that late cock of the wrists. His 50 came up in the 32nd over with a tickle fine to the rope off Nathan Lyon.It was against Lyon that Burns really showed the worth of his innings. He played him late. He leapt back when he could. Most of all he provided a bulwark. Lyon has tortured England’s left-handers at various stages. But then, what was he going to do to Burns, who already looks like he’s in agony, who came here pre-tortured, but who kept drawing Lyon in and then picking him off.
The nineties were painful at times. One Cummins over saw Burns play and miss – great whooshing misses – four times. All that mattered was he got there. Non-ennobled England openers have not prospered in Ashes Tests recently. Sir Alastair Cook ground away into his dotage but Mark Stoneman never got past 56, Michael Carberry peaked at 60 against a great attack and Adam Lyth did not get past 19.
Burns will draw huge strength from his innings, just as England look to have built a position of strength around its armature. Whatever happens from here this will remain a self-contained moment of triumph for the man with the flinch and the crouch.
