Jonny Bairstow, who was initially dropped for the test series against New Zealand, has now been asked to stay with the England test team as the opening batsman Joe Denly caused a bit of damage to his ankle while practicing recently.
The England selectors are not sure how long it will take Denly to recover from his injury. In case, he doesn’t manage to get fit ahead of the first test match which is scheduled to start from the 21st of November, Bairstow might be included in the playing XI.
Bairstow, however, hasn’t opened the batting yet in test match cricket for England. The Yorkshire right-hander does open the batting in the white ball formats of the game, but not against red ball.
England had tried him at no. 3 in one of the test matches in Sri Lanka and he had scored a hundred there, but the conditions in Sri Lanka were not seamer friendly. It was more about handling spin there.
Playing in the top order in New Zealand against the swinging ball is a completely different proposition.
Jonny Bairstow, till the Ashes series, was England’s first choice wicketkeeper, but because of his dismal performance against Australia, he was left out of the side for the New Zealand series and Jos Buttler, England’s white-ball keeper, was assigned the role of the test keeper as well.
Now that Bairstow has been called back due to Denly’s injury, it will be interesting to see if the team management gives him the gloves and Buttler plays as a specialist batsman.
The chances of that happening are, however, low. If Bairstow opens, it’s only logical that Buttler keeps wickets because every team wants their keeper to have a little bit of recovery time before they go out to bat.
It’s not like the limited-overs formats where the keepers have to keep only for 50 overs or 20 overs and hence, they can open the innings as well. In test match cricket, you might have to keep for more than 100 overs and opening the innings after that is not ideal.
