Previous England selection committees circulated rumors that a player would be dropped, or else suddenly dropped. The regime of Robert Key, Brendon McCullum and Ben Stokes takes a different, quiet approach: if a player is not publicly cleared during or at the end of a Test series, this is the time for him to worry about his place.
Alex Lees was the first to receive this silent vote of no confidence from the England Test selectors. Now it’s Jonny Bairstow and Ben Foakes’ turn with the bat after their lackluster Test series in India. As attention turns to the T20 World Cup, it appears someone new will be selected as the next wicketkeeper-batsman for the England Test side, starting at Lord’s on July 10 against the West Indies.
Here are the six players considered to be the leading candidates:
Jonny Bairstow
There was a time when Bairstow was the perfect No. 7 – given the odd human error – until Ed Smith became chairman of the England selectors and promoted him to No. 5; an untenable position for a wicketkeeper. Now it’s too late to turn back the clock: Bairstow is a specialist batsman and occasional keeper because after major leg surgery he is not flexible enough for the acrobatics required. The brilliant dive for a one-handed catch, yes, but not for holding on to the spinners for extended periods of time. The other point that emerged from last winter: having earned his 100th Test cap, does he have the hunger to exert himself and get big scores when necessary? The proof in India, when he made a start but failed to reach 40, was that his mentality is: don’t hang around.
Ability to run 8/10
Wicketkeeping 6/10
Hitting with the tail 9/10
Super strength The time when all guns blare, as if you were chasing a target.
Ben Foakes
After an early mistake in India, he had a near-flawless winter behind the stumps. If there was a better wicketkeeper in the world, especially when it came to spinners, no one seemed to know his or her name. Some of the catches, after the batsman’s edge had deflected the ball to a relatively large angle, were underappreciated. But a total of 205 runs in 10 innings was not enough. And his Test career strike rate of 47 – in other words, less than three runs per over – will be sufficient in England against smaller teams, but not in Australia in 20 months’ time when the top order is faltering and the tail is showing. And it’s probably fair to add that if he could have incorporated more batting weight into his batting, he would have done so at age 31. It’s like Joe Root and T20. Foakes and power hitting don’t go together.
Ability to run 7/10
Wicketkeeping 10/10
Hitting with the tail 6/10
Super strength Getting up against the stumps for spinners.
Phil Salt
Similar to Bairstow, his qualities are physical strength, combativeness, athleticism and efficiency rather than finesse, whether batting or wicket keeping. More robust than tight, but that doesn’t matter at the turning point of a Test match. The point is that Salt, at 27, is more of a white-ball than a red-ball cricketer – although not to the same extent as Jos Buttler was at the same age. Salt had an early foundation in the Championship as a specialist batsman in the Sussex top-flight, and has scored six first-class centuries, while Buttler has made seven in his entire career. Even when it comes to the red ball and all its attributes, Salt’s relative inexperience could be telling. In short, he would be an excellent candidate if England happened to be looking for a wicketkeeper who could bat in the top order for their Test team; less so for a keeper’s bat at age seven, although he would undoubtedly be assertive if given the task of tail batting. Moreover, Salt has so many white-ball commitments that he could not, like Buttler, devote all his energy to being England’s Test keeper at bat.
Ability to run 8/10
Wicketkeeping 6/10
Hitting with the tail 8/10
Super strength Fearless physicality in everything he does.
Ollie Robinson
The most qualified of the new candidates, which doesn’t mean he’ll get the job. It may seem like he came out of nowhere, but he actually hails from Kent, as so many of England’s best wicketkeepers have done, such as Les Ames, Godfrey Evans and Alan Knott (and like them, he didn’t go to a fee-paying school like most contemporary wicketkeeper-batsmen do). Unable to secure a white-ball position at Kent, he moved to Durham and flourished there, especially as a red-ball batsman in their fifth-place side. In Durham’s only win this season, in a lively Kidderminster, his counter-attacking 50 on the opening day – especially strong with the pull and the leg whip – got them going; and in his final innings he hit an unbeaten career-best 171 from 206 balls, bringing them close to their target of 475. But a question about his wicketkeeping: how good is he on his left side? – arose during that match against Lancashire. When their left-hander Keaton Jennings took an early lead, Robinson made a move to the right as the ball flew right between the keeper and first slip, aka a keeper’s catch. The media everywhere would be such a miss in a test. It could be overlooked in a championship match, except Jennings was going to make the match-making century, and halfway through the match was… Ben Stokes.
Ability to run 8/10
Wicketkeeping 7/10
Hitting with the tail 8/10
Super strength Counter-attacks, as Bairstow has done, but not Foakes.
Jamie Smith
In 1991-92, England unveiled an exceptional opening batsman, Alec Stewart. They could have launched the post-Gooch era with a top-notch complementary opening partnership of Mike Atherton, defensive, and the attacking Stewart. Instead, the selectors dropped Stewart’s order and kept the wicket, and a decade of mediocrity followed. The same mistake should not be made this time. Smith can keep the wicket, as can Foakes on a bad day, but he is an excellent batsman in the making, in any format, and should be able to concentrate on that (he could be reserve keeper, on a quiet winter tour, like Ollie Pope, but not anymore). His at bat? Suppose Joe Root started now, did all the strength training and played all the T20 power shots from birth: that’s what Smith is like. A dazzling talent, ranked No. 4 in red-ball cricket, but also a brilliant power hitter, who bends his knees, flexes his muscles – and already the scorer of the fastest hundred for the Lions. Or what about his 45 from 25 in Surrey’s chase against Somerset in April? Please don’t spoil him or her this time.
Ability to run 10/10
Wicketkeeping 4/10
Hitting with the tail 7/10
Super strength In one simple word: hitting.
James Rew
It would have been an ideal form of tertiary education – after King’s College, Taunton, Buttler’s alma mater – if Rew, aged twenty and four months, had now been able to simultaneously keep the wicket to Jack Leach and Shoaib Bashir; but selecting two specialist spinners in English cricket appears to be banned, so he has to make do with one or the other, and sometimes neither. Meanwhile, outside Somerset’s seams, he has made some brilliant catches with one hand, fully extended to his right – and he is, of course, left-handed. As a batsman he is like an old-fashioned No. 6, playing himself calmly and coolly before sending his strokes: exactly what you would want if England were to collapse in the next Ashes series, but not what the management will want at seven against smaller countries before then. When Rew tried to start more aggressively earlier this season it didn’t work, but he is now back to scoring first-class centuries – seven so far – at his own pace.
Ability to run 8/10
Wicketkeeping 8/10
Hitting with the tail 6/10
Super strength His composure when starting an inning, accentuated by his quick and decisive footwork when the ball is delivered.