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That’s aggression. England play a particular brand of cricket, and that’s the Bairstow way. But there’s also a catch: aggression is a double-edged sword that can burn you.
Bairstow always knew it and has received several burns throughout his cricketing career. Over the last few years, he’s been in a rut multiple times but has always waded through that stressed jungle to find a way out.
In the last few months, particularly, he’s found ways when the entire world has come torn around him. Ask Andre Russell; he's been on the receiving end of a carnage twice.
Six games into the 2024 Indian Premier League (IPL) season, Bairstow, one of Punjab Kings’ much-coveted batting projects, was dropped. Not too long ago, the Kings had splurged INR 6.75 to acquire his services.
His season was shaping up to be an absolute disaster. Six innings, 96 runs, an average of 16 and a strike rate of 131.5 in an IPL season where the standards were set sky-high, giving Punjab no choice but to put him on the bench.
But come April 26, with his team requiring 262 to win, Bairstow was back baby.
In one of the most monstrous knocks in IPL history, the English batter put on an absolute show on a belter of a wicket, scoring a sizzling 108 off 48 balls.
With Bairstow, there isn’t any of that pyrotechnics or razzmatazz nonsense. His batting is almost like a cold-blooded murder; the procedure is always the same - see the ball, hit the ball. Russell saw it with his own eyes, Bairstow had absolutely razored 20 runs off eight of his deliveries that night in Kolkata.
Something similar brewed at this year’s T20 World Cup. Bairstow was absolutely shambolic in England’s crushing defeat against arch-rivals Australia. None of his hits had any sort of power in it. Even from a distance, you could feel the air as the ball went past the bat when he scored 7 off just 13 deliveries when the pressure was high.
And then came the flooding — messages, threats, criticism, a barrage of it. Some wanted him benched, the others wanted him axed.
His record at the T20 World Cups was such. Until the Namibia game, Bairstow had played 13 innings for the Three Lions at the global event, and his record was ummmm, well below middling. He was dwindling to a level where his contribution was almost next to nil.
13 innings, 100 off 103, nine outs, average of 11.11 and SR of 97.1.
Had it been any other batter, maybe this would have flown down the bridge. But this was England’s most mercurial T20 batter, Bairstow. Such records don’t really cut it to the top layer.
That’s when Bairstow turned his form around.
Indeed, the opponents were 'only' Namibia. They aren’t a big team in any given sense, but the gravitas of the occasion was such that one tiny blip could have seen England return to the United Kingdom and not trudge their way into the Super 8s. It was that big.
On an occasion such as that, Bairstow answered England's call with an 18-ball 31, coming at No.3.
But on Thursday (June 20), he did something that he had never done before at the T20 World Cups, which was put on a significant show with the stakes ludicrously high. At 84/2, chasing 181, England weren’t in a deep mess. But they were in an uncomfortable situation that West Indies found themselves in earlier in the night, a phase where run-scoring became tough.
That’s when Bairstow put his hands up, waging the battles in the wisest manner, sweeping and cutting as though his bat was a hockey stick with sponsors now on it. If he wasn’t cutting and wading it through, he was hammering 'em down the ground, providing England with the much-needed impetus at the point when Phil Salt’s brilliant start was tapering off.
He didn’t spare anyone. When West Indies brought their best two bowlers in the tournament - Alzarri Joseph and Akeal Hossein - he bludgeoned them back to despair.
Short ball might have worked for Australia on that night but here, it was perhaps the worst ball to bowl, considering how the wind blew. It made it all the more easier, in fact, for Bairstow to clear the boundary.
Even West Indies’ ace of spade, Hosein, proved to be a futile throw into the larger mix of a Bairstow poker-ade. The right-hander was having fun, leaving no caution to the wind in the process, either.
By the time Hosein’s spell ended, Windies’ hopes were in thin air. The monster that was Bairstow swept through like he was crushing cars. Even in his cruelty, there was science and art mixed with it.
The science of wind and the art of bludgeoning - all in one, like Bairstow, a rare package.
Quite ironically, Bairstow’s best-ever T20 World Cup innings came against the same opponent against whom he had scored a 29-ball 18 all the way back in 2012.
History has its way of story-telling, and Bairstow has his way of narrating them.
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