IAN HERBERT: Memo to the Aussies – Jonny Bairstow will be more dangerous now than EVER

The landmark just up ahead for Jonny Bairstow is testament to his extraordinary powers of perseverance in cricket.

A mere 48 runs in the course of the next five days will make him only the 10th English player to complete 1,000 of them at Lord’s, though none of the select group has a story of survival quite like his. He has proved people wrong, again and again, and generally engaged in his best work when the doubts are most vivid.

There is timelessness about the man, who has been left out and moved about the order so often that the notion of him being here, aged 33, a pillar of the new England, is an achievement against all odds. 

He is English cricket’s everyman, too, because of that demeanour of his — always showing exactly how much it means and how much effort has been expended to deliver.

On the eve of the Test, he finds himself at the centre of a different kind of warfare — Jim Maxwell’s questioning of his weight, as well as his eligibility to carry the gloves into another Ashes Test.

Jonny Bairstow is just 48 shy of 1,000 Test runs at Lord’s – only nine have managed the feat

Australia edged the tense first Test but should be wary of Bairstow in the second at Lord’s

There have been utterances from both Englishmen and Australians, in the past week or so, which frankly don’t belong in 2023. Ollie Robinson’s F-bombing Usman Khawaja was one of them. But Maxwell’s was the more objectionable. Immeasurably so.

That will have registered. There is certainly an insecurity behind that swashbuckling style — perhaps understandable in a man who has fought his way back into consideration so often.

But Brendon McCullum seems to have unlocked more in him than any other England player. Bairstow’s beautiful 2018 autobiography was titled A Clear Blue Sky — the story of a man hoping to find one — and the blue-sky thinking provided by McCullum and Ben Stokes has transformed him more than most. He will be a very dangerous individual in the days ahead.

Several years ago, Bairstow approached sports psychologist David Priestley to sort out his mental approach to batting, though it was evidently not a long conversation. Priestley asked Bairstow to write down the basic principles of his batting.

He wrote: ‘See the ball, hit the ball, dominate, keep it simple’. Priestly read it, pushed it back, and said: ‘That’s your blueprint. Use it.’ Bairstow laminated the paper and carried it in his kitbag.

He has worn his Ashes experiences on his sleeve in a way which has left those of us who have tracked his rollercoaster Test career feeling like we have been right there alongside him.

The celebration of his ninth Test century in the middle of the Sydney Cricket Ground, 18 months ago, will live long in the memory — Bairstow absorbing 105 balls in the final day of a fourth Test, guaranteeing a draw that ensured there would be no Ashes whitewash. His response was ‘equal parts relief and told-you-so’, one observer wrote that day.

Nasser Hussain once described Bairstow as a ‘street-fighting, over-my-dead-body’ cricketer. He has more incentive than ever to take that game to Australia now.

Australian commentator Jim Maxwell (right) has branded Bairstow ‘overweight’ ahead of the second Ashes Test