Jonny Bairstow’s bizarre injury robs England of a key player for Thursday’s third Test against South Africa, but it also opens the door for someone else – and the gap in England’s middle order will be filled by the massively promising Yorkshire batter Harry Brook.
Brook’s form in the early stages of this year’s County Championship – after 12 innings in the competition he averages 107.44 – was so good that he has spent the entire summer as next in line for a Test place, and his chance has finally arrived, albeit nearly two months after he last played a first-class match. It is five years since I first met him, when I coached England’s Under-19s on their 2017 tour of India, and as a result of what I saw then I have not been at all surprised by this success.
I remember one net in particular. Harry was in against the spinners and he was playing very confidently, using his feet very well, and he looked like he was enjoying himself. So I decided to challenge him and gave him a half bat, a training aid which is half the width of a normal bat. When you play one of these you have to be very precise with your footwork, and against spin you have to either get very close to the pitch of the ball or play off the back foot.
Harry, though, continued to play in exactly the same way – very aggressive, dancing down the wicket, hitting the ball back over the bowlers’ heads. And while doing it he’d turn to me and grin as if to say: “I can still play my way even with your thin bat.” And I was also grinning, because as a coach that is exactly the sort of character you want to see in a young player. He embraced the challenge not as a threat but as an opportunity to show his skill, and to have fun. I remember seeing exactly this quality in a young Joe Root a few years earlier.
I have not worked with him since that tour, but of course I have noticed his scores – it has been hard not to. Traditionally, young players have earned international call-ups with runs in the County Championship; more recently some have been selected on the back of runs in Twenty20 or 50-over cricket. Brook has scored runs in every format. In T20s openers normally find it easier to catch the eye, facing the most balls, benefitting from having fewer fielders in the deep during the powerplay, and avoiding the periods towards the end of the innings when batters face more challenges, having to think more about fields and scoring options. The fact that Brook has scored runs in all formats and from the middle order shows his intelligence and versatility.
He has also played an amount of franchise cricket, for Hobart Hurricanes in the Big Bash and Lahore Qalandars in the Pakistan Super League. There is always pressure on overseas players in these tournaments, because if they are being picked ahead of local players they will be expected to perform. He’s had a go at that and mixed in those circles, playing alongside elite international players, and has experienced those high-pressure moments and big crowds. These experiences are the great benefits of the franchise circuit, and he spent last winter soaking them up.
It is extremely difficult to succeed at both first-class and white-ball cricket. In the short formats a batter will be thrown into do-or-die situations, moments when they have no choice but to take risks. That contrasts with the traditional approach to Test cricket as played by some of England’s best batters, people like Graham Gooch, Alastair Cook or Ian Bell. In red-ball cricket there will be times when you can afford to take a risk, but it is often better not to, and the decisions a batter is forced to make will be more in number and complexity. Sometimes short-format players can be unsure how to react to this blank canvas, and might also be thrown by unfamiliar field placings and spaces where they don’t expect them to be. The approach the England team has taken this summer will make it easier for players to transition from short formats to Test cricket, but many of these problems remain.
The obvious difference between the formats is also the most awkward one to deal with: how to pace your innings – how fast should a player score, how much should they trust defence? The answers to those questions come with experience and matches, but for a tiny number of batters they will be instinctive. It may be that Brook is one of those, time will tell. His versatility will certainly be tested as he makes his debut having played only seven innings in August, all but one of them in the Hundred. It is promising that in the middle of that run he played for England Lions against South Africa in a four-day game and scored 140.
The forecast for this week is not encouraging, and it looks like the first couple of days in particular could be severely affected by rain, but the first two games of the series were over within three days and anything is still possible. However the Test summer ends, it has been a really encouraging few months for the England side and I was further encouraged on Monday when I went to The Grove in Hertfordshire for the Professional Cricketers’ Association golf day, with the entire Test squad in attendance.
All the players, from the most experienced to the youngest, seemed very relaxed in each other’s company and, so far as I could tell, the spirit between them was excellent. This was a day when the PCA put the players on display and gave their sponsors the chance to mix with them – not necessarily the kind of occasion that sportspeople relish. But they were a credit to the game throughout, and showed the kind of togetherness that is a feature of the most successful squads. The only problem was that they are all excellent golfers who hit the ball a country mile.
