“He’s got a gift.” – David Miller on Tristan Stubbs.
Telford Vice / Catania, Sicily
SAM Curran may never have to walk anywhere ever again. Jonny Bairstow will carry him on his shoulders for the rest of his days. At least, Bairstow should in the wake of what happened in Bristol on Tuesday and Wednesday.
Bairstow left the indoor nets at the ground on Tuesday with ice packs strapped around his left knee after seeming to injure himself as he tried to rise from a lunge performed with Curran slung across his back like a sack of vegetables. Footage of the incident looked like a trick in a Victorian circus gone wrong.
In the first T20I on Wednesday, Bairstow survived four — four! — chances in the deep to hammer 90 off the 53 balls he faced from South Africa’s bowlers, clubbing 60 of his runs in fours and sixes, and sharing 71 off 45 with Dawid Malan and 106 off 37 with Moeen Ali to help England pile up 234/6 — their second-highest total in the format. Knee injury? What knee injury?
Bairstow has had a bumper 2022. His feat on Wednesday, aided and abetted by Bristol’s cosy boundaries, was his ninth trip past 50 in 22 innings across the formats this year, during which he has reached six centuries. He seemed fated to register a seventh when, with two deliveries left in the innings, his talisman, Curran, put him on strike with the help of another spilled chance — what would have been a fine catch at short midwicket by Kagiso Rabada off Lungi Ngidi. But, needing at least a six and a four to give his personal fairytale another happy ending, Bairstow hoisted the next ball to midwicket. Surprisingly, given the quality of South Africa’s catching in the innings, Rilee Rossouw — who had given Bairstow one of his lives — held on.
Lost in all that was that Moeen’s 16-ball 50 — he ended up with 52 off 18 — was the fastest half-century in England’s 152 T20Is, and that Ngidi’s 5/39 was the most expensive five-wicket haul in the 1,693 games in the format yet played.
Facts like those, significant though they were, were dazzled into insignificance by Bairstow’s blast. The same went for just about everything else that happened in the match. Reeza Hendricks’ 33-ball 57 was his first half-century in eight white-ball internationals, and Tristan Stubbs spent much of his time in the middle nodding frenetically at David Miller and the rest of it clubbing England’s bowlers for 72 off 28 balls. “He’s got a gift,” Miller said in his television interview.
Stubbs, 18 days away from his 22nd birthday and playing his third international but batting for the first time, raced to 50 off 19 deliveries to claim South Africa’s second-fastest half-century in their 153 T20Is. He played like a beardless Bairstow, 11 years the Englishman’s junior and with a keener, cleaner eye. And perhaps an even more emphatic talent for sending the ball screaming for the fences.
But experience would win on the night. Chris Jordan, who turns 34 in October and was playing his 121st match for England, stood at the top of his run with 54 required off the last three overs. The sizzling Stubbs was still there on 70, Andile Phehlukwayo looked in the mood with 18 not out off 10, and the game remained in the balance. The calm, canny, cool, collected Jordan changed that equation with four yorkers and two full tosses, conceding only three off the over and, effectively, shutting down the game as a contest. Was that how to counter über aggressive batting line-ups like England’s?
It was left, unfairly, to Ngidi to answer that question at his press conference: “All bowlers have their own gameplans, and as much as we say nothing beats a good yorker we also realise that guys line up and hit yorkers a lot better now. Keeping the guys guessing is also part of the gameplan. It all boils down to execution. Tonight [Jordan’s] execution was on point. On any other evening it could have gone the other way.”
South Africa ended up 42 runs short. Stubbs was the solution, but the visitors had too many problems. “We had full faith in Stubbs,” Ngidi said. “Even during training we have seen what he’s capable of, so we weren’t really surprised to see what we saw today. I’ve bowled to him and I’ve been on the receiving end of what you saw tonight.”
South Africans will hope they see more of the same, and less of Bairstow, in Cardiff on Thursday and in Southampton on Sunday. The English will hope for the opposite. Neutrals will covet many more runs from both.
First published by Cricbuzz.
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