Picking Jonny Bairstow in England’s Test side isn’t helping him, and it isn’t helping England either, writes Ben Gardner.

Well, at least he didn’t get bowled. But that was the only redeeming factor from Jonny Bairstow’s second-innings dismissal, slicing the second delivery Kagiso Rabada bowled with the second new ball, fullish, widish, and swinging away, straight to gully. It was a shot unworthy of the great Test batsman it seemed Bairstow could become at his 2016 peak, and also exactly what you’d expect from a player averaging 23.03 since the start of the 2018 summer.

Bairstow did, of course, have his stumps spluttered in the first innings, and while there were caveats – the ball kept slightly low and he was far from the most culpable in England’s game-losing collapse – the statistics are staggering and the trend troubling.

Did this one keep a bit low? pic.twitter.com/EgEWkX61Kp — Wisden (@WisdenCricket) December 27, 2019

He has now been bowled 16 times since the start of England’s tour to Australia in 2017, more than anyone else in the world in that time. Against balls from seamers projected to hit the stumps, his average has fallen of a cliff, from 21.60 (above the global average for the top seven) between the start of 2016 to the start of the 2017/18 Ashes to 5.42 since. Opposing teams can be pretty confident of bowling a few straight balls and eventually running through Bairstow. None of this is new information, but that only makes it all the more troubling that no serious steps have yet been taken to sort out a fatal technical flaw.

It was in the ODIs between his final Test engagement of the 2017 summer and that 17/18 Ashes series that Bairstow was promoted permanently to England’s opening spot in white-ball cricket, and it’s that as much as anything that his led to his Test struggles. To open up the off-side, he started taking a more leg-side stance, making his stumps a more open target, and as his ODI form has flourished, his Test travails have worsened. It’s a credit to Bairstow that he is capable of being among the best in the world in both limited-overs and Test cricket, and no great criticism that he seems unable of being both at the same time.

But that golden day at Lord’s is now in the past. England’s stated aim, as they stumble into their ‘new cycle’, is to once again become one of the best Test sides in the world. Their handling of Bairstow leaves little room for him to rediscover his first-class defensive technique and play a significant part in that.

While he was left out of England’s Test squad to face New Zealand, with hopeful noises made that he would be given the chance to go away and undertake an extended stretch of technical rebuilding, his inclusion in England’s T20I squad to face New Zealand and his retaining as injury cover ahead of the subsequent Test series gave him precious little time to do so.

“I think there’s a real opportunity for him to reset and focus on how he can go about becoming that really top Test match player,” said national selector Ed Smith at the time. Since his dropping and subsequent call-up to face South Africa, he faced the sum total of zero balls in first-class cricket and from the evidence of the first Test at least, his period at a training camp in South Africa seems to have had little effect.

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What he needs is a proper spell out, hitting balls with someone whose counsel he trusts in a sports hall or back garden somewhere in Yorkshire far away from everything, and then a long stretch playing first-class cricket – Bairstow has managed just three games (bowled twice in six innings) for Yorkshire since that fateful white-ball promotion. But he is now unlikely to play any significant first-class cricket for the whole of 2020.

Health permitting, Ollie Pope will be recalled for the second Test, Bairstow once again confined to stewing on the sidelines. He has been picked in England’s ODI and T20I squads to face South Africa, so it will be late February by the time he gets back home, and he will then shortly be off either to the Sunrisers Hyderabad or to Sri Lanka, with the former potentially keeping him out of the first six rounds of the County Championship.

He should be available for one Yorkshire fixture in mid-June, but England’s white-ball series against Australia – from which Smith and co. will be unwilling to rest him with a T20 World Cup around the corner – begins on July 3 and could rule him out of their games against Essex on June 28 and against Gloucestershire on July 5. He should play in their 10th game, in mid-August, before England white-ball commitments get in the way again, keeping him out of their 11th, 12th and 13th fixtures before a possible return for their final game of the season, against Surrey at The Oval.

Even assuming he doesn’t get injured, or made unavailable by England at any point, other commitments might restrict Bairstow to just three Championship games. Then it’s off to India for six white-ball games and Australia for the T20 World Cup.

If there was a time for Bairstow to take some time out to rediscover himself, it was during the ongoing Test series in South Africa. There was no need to pick him – Ben Foakes or Ben Brown could have made equally capable keeping deputies, and Dawid Malan or Sam Northeast more in-form backup batsmen. He could have even tried to get some first-class game time in South African franchise cricket, of which three rounds will be played during January.

Something has to give. It is virtually impossible for an in-demand, world-class white-ball player take up all the opportunities available to them and have any extensive time to remedy any glaring technical defensive faults, let alone prove that that they have remedied them in domestic cricket. At the moment, picking Bairstow in England’s Test side isn’t helping him, and it isn’t helping England either.