India vs England: Jonny Bairstow stamps his authority with brilliant ton in difficult circumstances – Firstcricket News, Firstpost

Another day, another Jonny Bairstow hundred.

England might have endured another difficult day at Edgbaston but the summer of Bairstow continues unaffected, the purplest of purple patches rolls on.

It has been an extraordinary three weeks for England’s number five who has scored 8.96% of his total Test runs in the past 20 days – not bad going for a man with 5301 of them in a 10-year career.

Against New Zealand he was rampant, his back-to-back, match-defining hundreds both coming at better than a run a ball, England’s new strategy distilled into its purest form and then made flesh. This century, although once again made under significant scoreboard duress, was a slightly different beast, Bairstow’s batting smarts on display as well as his brute force.

Bairstow started the day on, by recent standards, a positively sedate 12 from 47 balls, and although he and Ben Stokes were looking to counterattack, their efforts were kept largely in check by yet another excellent spell from both Jasprit Bumrah and the luckless Mohammed Shami.

Enter Virat Kohli with a word or two in Bairstow’s ear after a play and miss to Shami, with whatever was said requiring the umpires to step in and gently calm things down – nothing majorly dramatic but a long way from the bonhomie seen between the two walking off the field the previous evening.

Watch: Virat Kohli and Jonny Bairstow’s fiery exchange on Day 3 of Edgbaston Test

It seemed at the time a curious choice from Kohli to rile Bairstow – a man practically infamous in the sport for thriving when angered, so many of his best moments forged in the fury of slights real and imagined – and so it proved in retrospect, the contretemps between the two coinciding almost exactly with the moment Bairstow dramatically shifted gears.

Sport feeds on juicy narrative and while of course Kohli’s ill-advised poking of the Bairstow is an alluring one, the less dramatically inclined will claim it had little effect on the situation, the combination of the England man getting his eye in and the continuation of his incredible recent form far more likely factors than a little sledging from India’s former captain.

The reality as ever probably lies a little between the two camps, but whatever its cause, the results were no less spectacular, Bairstow in full flight in his current mood is something to behold – a one day wolf in cable-knit sheep’s clothing.

Bairstow was never afraid to take the aerial route, be it perfectly executed lofted drives down the ground or booming sixes into the leg side, and yet he never appeared to be anything other than in control, his aggression all the more devastating for its precision.

Also Read: Cheteshwar Pujara gives India edge in final Test

And what you might ask has been the secret to Bairstow’s success? The man himself offered the simplest of explanations at the close of play: “I’ve not really thought of technique and stuff like that, I’ve just stripped everything back and tried to focus on watching the ball.”

Watch the ball, perhaps the oldest piece of advice in the book, although judging by Bairstow’s results you can certainly see why.

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