Jonny Bairstow: "It will feel weird going back to Headingley and being in the away dressing room"

NICK FRIEND & HUW TURBERVILL AT THE HUNDRED TEAM REVEAL: Bairstow, like Joe Root, was chosen via the drawing of lots after Ben Stokes was selected ahead of the Yorkshire pair by Northern Superchargers

One of Jonny Bairstow’s first moves as Welsh Fire’s marquee Test player was to send a message to Liam Williams and Jonathan Davies.

The pair are out in Japan as part of Wales’ squad at the Rugby World Cup; Bairstow is friends with both.

And while he confesses that strolling into the away dressing room at Headingley – a venue synonymous with the Bairstow name – will be unusual, he is more than happy with where he has been placed, genuinely enthused by the chance to figurehead a new team.

Cardiff is where Bairstow made his international debut – a rain-affected one-day international against India, well before England’s white-ball revolution had begun. Bairstow struck a match-winning unbeaten 41 that evening in a side captained by Alastair Cook, featuring a top order also including Craig Kieswetter, Jonathan Trott and Ian Bell. Rahul Dravid made 69 for India.

That was then – and how the game has progressed since. It brings Bairstow’s life as an international cricketer back to where it begun.

“It’s an amazing place for a start, and I enjoy playing there,” he said on Thursday morning after finding out his fate.

Bairstow, like Joe Root and Rory Burns, was chosen via the drawing of lots after Ben Stokes was selected ahead of the Yorkshire pair by Northern Superchargers, while Sam Curran was preferred to Burns by Oval Invincibles.

“It’s a new competition. There isn’t any loyalty within this competition, if that makes sense," he said. "There’s loyalty in county cricket with Yorkshire, but when it comes to a new competition, a new franchise, it’s a new start. It will feel weird going back to Headingley and being in the away dressing room, definitely.”

That Bairstow was overlooked for Stokes is no slight on the wicketkeeper, even if his red-ball form has seen him lose his Test match position for the tour of New Zealand.

A crucial cog in England’s World Cup win at the top of the order alongside Jason Roy, he formed the Indian Premier League’s most ferocious opening partnership of all time alongside David Warner earlier this year. The level of threat he poses knows few bounds, especially having taken the IPL by storm in his first year.

“You are going to get some ridiculous scores,” he promised. Some others have batted away questions of strategy and tactics, suggesting that it is either too early or too unknown to truly understand what may occur. Naturally, Bairstow is more forthcoming.

“What we’ve seen in the T20 Blast this year is that the scores are going up and up and up, and the skill levels are going up,” he said. “You are going to be looking at nearly two per ball. You are looking at 180, 200. That’s what you’re going to be looking at.

“But at the same time, if someone gets on a roll, you’ve got 10 balls that you can bowl in a row. If someone gets on a roll, then they can pick up two, three, four wickets like that, which changes the game. It’s not like you’ve got now with an over – we’ve seen Rashid Khan come over in the T20 Blast.

“If he goes like that and gets a couple and all of a sudden you’ve got someone coming in who hasn’t faced him before, you can quite easily see it flipping on its head.”

^{Jonny Bairstow has been left out of England's Test squad for the series in New Zealand}

Bairstow is likely to be joined at the top of the order by Tom Banton, the precocious Somerset youngster, who has joined the franchise as one of two local icon players – alongside Glamorgan’s Colin Ingram.

Banton has been placed in the £100,000 bracket – some show of faith in a 20-year-old on the back of a single full season of Blast cricket. It is a nod to his undoubted talent.

Bairstow, of course, will hope his involvement in the competition is restricted by a place in England’s Test side for the summer series against Pakistan. He knows, though, that first he must regain his place in the red-ball side.

“It’s not the first time that I’ve been left out of a side,” he stated. “You’ve seen my hunger, desire and my want to play for England. If that wasn’t the case, it wouldn’t have happened, and I wouldn’t have done what I’ve done for so long.

“There’s naturally a hunger. I’ve played as a batter I’ve played as a keeper. It’s a matter of what can I do to get back in the team.

“We have got New Zealand T20s and then, when we come back, it’s a case of having a bit of time – it’s like a training period.

“It’s actually quite exciting because it’s quite rare that you get a chance with the schedule at the moment to actually go away and work on your game over a period of time and have that period where you can do some real quality work.

“It’s an opportunity to spend a bit of quality time working on my game and being excited about everything over the next however many years. I’m still only young. It’s not like I’m 36, 37.”