England must back Jonny Bairstow at Lord's

Is Bairstow a great Keeper the answer is no but he thinks he is, I even rate Buttler better. We do have a few very good exponents of the trade but the question are any a great batsmen? Again the answer is no. Bairstow in full flow is an outstanding bat and also a very fine fielder. I think he will play but you do have a point.

Bairstow is an outstanding batsman who looks tired at present. Ben Foakes looks to be the best prospect as keeper and Bairstow does have a technique problem keeping to spinners. So maybe drop Denly and bring in Foakes as the keeper. Denly didn't look test match standard at Edgebaston. I would have Bairstow every day over Denly. He has the ability to win a test match on his own if he gets going. Certainly not a Gilchrist but along those lines.

England have been obsessed with all-rounders for over a decade. Strangely it stems from their long held belief that you need 5 bowlers. It’s wrong in Test cricket. If your 4 best bowlers aren’t going to get you 20 wickets, it’s dumb to think that the fifth will make the difference. There is a “loser’s assumption” that you will be bowling for 120+ overs in an innings and you blow up your best bowlers. As AUSTRALIA have demonstrated for the past 30 years, winning teams only need 4 good bowlers (very good spinner essential), a good wicket keeper who can bat a bit, and 6 specialist batsmen. (Mitch Marsh proves the rule!) England are always playing these multiple all-rounders - Stokes, Bairstow, Ali. Ali is not a Test level spinner. Bairstow is not a Test level keeper. Fair enough to have a genuine all-rounder in Stokes, but the other two should be replaced with specialists. Bairstow needs to be dropped to find his batting form, he’s not in the best six batsmen in England atm

The pressure to perform when keeping – particularly given he was known for iron glove tendencies – may have been consuming him. The last 12 or so months with little or no keeping has seen him bat with freedom, completely focusing on it. He made a comment if I recall, a while back, suggesting he knew his only chance at an International recall was as a pure bat. Credit to him for crashing as many runs as he has since, and earning selection. For mine, the whole coincidental Wade & Paine story will always fascinate me.

I got it more from an interview he did yesterday

England can’t win Tests with ODI players. It would be a national disgrace if we can’t at least tie the series.

Was it the pressure of keeping or just that he has taken his batting game to a new level? He averaged 52 in the Sheffield Shield over the last two seasons, compared to about 40 prior to that. He still kept wicket for most of the two seasons - Paine only took over the gloves from him in the second half of 2018-19.

It should be the call of the selectors really. But Bairstow himself has publicly stated that he "doesn't want to give up the gloves". But if he's not even the best keeper in the team, let alone in the country, they shouldn't just be giving him the gloves because he wants that.

If you look at Bairstow’s career as a whole, he’s only averaged 30 playing as a specialist keeper, I guess because in his only one really good year, 2016, he was keeping as well. He also had a poor series against India a year ago, averaging 25. But I would have thought some of the criticisms of his keeping would be a key reason they will look at replacing him with Foakes, at least as keeper. But I suspect the English selectors won’t do it just yet. Interesting how someone with a career batting average of 35, and averaging over 34 in only one of the eight years he has played Test cricket, can be considered in the category of “form is temporary, class is permanent”. Quite a contrast with the Australian selection process this year, where Joe Burns with a century in his last Test and a Test average of 40 couldn’t even make the squad. But there don’t seem to be any batting specialist alternatives to Bairstow as there were for Burns. I would have thought England would look better with Foakes keeping and batting 7, but is Bairstow good enough to hold up a top 6 spot.

Yep - it all comes down to whether they want to win this series or not! If Jonny is the better keeper then why didn't he do it in the WC? Gillie was capable of keeping AND opening the batting in ODIs. If Butler is the better keeper then Jonny needs to roll his sleeves up and become a top 6 batsman. He can't go picking and choosing when he keeps.

Same here. And I think that's lead the selectors to give him what he wants, even when that's not the best thing for the team, too much. He says he wants to be the keeper, so he keeps the gloves, but he's not a good keeper. He's probably not even the best keeper in the current team, let alone in the country. I'm still baffled that he keeps instead of Buttler. Pretty sure Buttler's actually a better keeper. But it was a bit like the season Paine got brought back into the test team. Wade had moved back to Victoria, and at that time he'd been the incumbent test keeper. So they had matches when Wade and Paine both played and it was Paine playing as a pure batsman and Wade with the gloves, even though Paine has always been a vastly better keeper than Wade. But it was more a political decision - Wade was keeping for Australia, so he must get preference for that position with Tasmania - than one based on who is the best keeper. Sure, if you want to pick just one of them you might for for the one who's better with the bat and weaker with the gloves. But if you are picking both in the team, surely the gloves go to the better keeper. But it's something that happens regularly when it comes to keeping. (At domestic level anyway, it's not unusual to have more keepers coming through, but with only one keeping spot per team, others end up playing as batsmen. Doesn't happen as often at international level like it has in England lately).

Although, Buttler averages 12 against Australia in test cricket. So that's not promising. I do get the feeling that sometimes with selections Bairstow has got what he wants rather than the selectors just doing what's best for the team. At this point it should be put to him that if he's being selected as the keeper, then the only option is to replace him with a better keeper. If he's being selected as a batsman, then maybe he gets a few tests to see if he can turn his form around. It was interesting having Kumar Sangakkara analysing the difference in Bairstow and Paine keeping to the spinner, and just how much better overall body position Paine had to be able to take the ball well. It was a massive difference and really showed up Bairstow's keeping deficiencies.

Yeah, the worry for England is that they really only have one real test batsman in the side in Root. Their opening batsmen issues are well documented, but they also aren't getting anything much from Denly, Bairstow, Buttler, or Moeen. Foakes is really the only member of the middle to lower middle order who's actually scoring runs at the moment. If Rory Burns hundred in the first test turns out to be more an anomoly than an indication of his quality, their batting lineup is in immense trouble. There is massive pressure on Root to deliver, and while he's clearly their best batsman, his big issue is his conversion rate which makes it hard to rely on him to regularly go big to make up for the rest of the batting lineup like Smith can.

I get that impression about Jonny as well. For me the issue is that he simply isn't a Test standard keeper. Trying to keep to the desired standard clearly affects his batting - so the result is mediocrity in both! The same thing happened with Alec Stewart and Wayne Phillips (Aust). I think England would be better off working to make a consistent Test standard batsman out of Bairstow (batting in the top 5) and having Foakes as a better keeper who bats well at 7. I think the English selectors are confused between ODI, where bits and pieces cricketers can be useful ( a score of 30 is often pretty good at no. 6 and 7), and Test cricket which is a game for specialists with high order skills that can be maintained for long periods in often far more testing (hence the name!) conditions. When batting in ODIs you can see out a threatening bowler - in Tests he can bowl all day if he's physically capable...and pitches deteriorate etc. It's a different game. Just as 7s rugby and 15 a side rugby are different. You need specialist props, locks etc etc. for 15 a side. It just seems obvious stuff to me.

He should have a look at Matthew Wade for inspiration. A poor keeper picked for his batting, the pressure of keeping ended up affecting his batting output. Now without the gloves he realizes his batting was all he needed in the first place.