Jonny Bairstow wins fight with himself on most important day of all

SAM MORSHEAD AT EDGBASTON: Bairstow dropped his helmet to the floor and opened his arms wide, England's Maximus Decimus Meridius to the English media's Lucius, staring down on him from their lofty box in the gods

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Scorecard

The groans of disappointment hung on the Edgbaston air.

In living rooms and pavilions across the land, cricketers young and old booed at their TVs and mobile phones; on Fleet Street, sub-editors readied edifices and rummaged for matches; and on the back row of the TMS commentary box, Michael Vaughan was grumpily plugging ‘red-headed voodoo doll’ into Google.

The sheer cheek of Jonny Bairstow, hitting a magnificent century in his country’s most important men’s cricket match in a generation. How dare he? How bloody dare he?

The week leading up to this meeting of the two best ODI sides on the planet has of course been littered with discussion about Bairstow’s interpretation of recent criticism of this England team.

Bairstow, a naturally pugnacious bloke who seems to thrive off a nagging sense of injustice, mouthed off about those whom he believed were willing England to fail and ended up knitting himself into a very public back-and-forth with Michael Vaughan.

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Jonny Bairstow made a century for England against India

The exchange was not particularly edifying, and the argument did not make an awful lot of sense, but the result was quite spectacular.

This was Bairstow at his defiant best, retaliating after being wronged - 111 from 109 balls on the most important day of all. It didn’t matter that he had managed to start a fight with himself, he was still going to win it. 

The entire innings had a sense of the middle finger about it.

A crunching six over mid-on off Yuzvendra Chahal’s third ball. “Shut up”.

A towering cross-batted thundercrunch into the Hollies. “Do one”.

Reverse sweep after reverse sweep after reverse sweep. “I. Do. Not. Care. What. You. Think.”

Thriving once again in partnership with Jason Roy - whose aggressive approach to the early overs allows Bairstow more time to settle and places less emphasis on him to score quickly - the Yorkshireman made the most of his opportunity to deprive a multitude of pundits a happy afternoon of throat-jumping. 

There was an element of irony, actually, that on this particular occasion a good 75 per cent of those inside Edgbaston would have been actively willing him to fail - such was the heavily Indian nature of the crowd - but this sort of situation fuels Bairstow’s engine. 

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Bairstow thrived having Jason Roy back with him at the top of the order

Back him into a corner and he’ll run through brickwork rather than concede, push him up against the ropes and watch him turn them into Windsor knots.

There were nerves early on - two prods outside off at Mohammed Shami brought inside edges which flirted with his leg stump - but once he felt comfortable, he settled in for the long haul.

Typically hard-handed against the quicks, Bairstow applied more nuance against spin. Prior to today, he had only used the reverse sweep five times in ODI cricket. In the space of a couple of overs here, he found the third man boundary three times. Audacious, ambitious, adaptable - triple A grade batting.

A push into the legside took him to three figures from 90 balls - his best innings of the World Cup, among the best of his international career - at which point he dropped his helmet to the floor and opened his arms wide, England’s Maximus Decimus Meridius to the English media’s Lucius, staring down on him from their lofty, glass-fronted box in the gods.

“Are you not entertained”.

If we tell him we aren't, who knows what he'll do next.

Our coverage of the ICC Cricket World Cup 2019 is brought to you in association with Cricket 19, the official video game of the Ashes. Order your copy now at Amazon.co.uk

 

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