Harry Brook continues to fire World Cup selection debate while Jonny Bairstow does Jonny Bairstow things
Cameron Ponsonby01-Sep-2023Right, where to start with that one then? A day after Dawid Malan said he wasn’t worried about Harry Brook taking his World Cup place and that: “I’m not there to please anyone, I’m there to score runs”, he gets a four-ball duck. Brook, naturally, then scores a borderline offensive 67 off 36 balls to show that Malan (and Jason Roy and Liam Livingstone) should indeed be worried about their World Cup places, while at the other end Jonny Bairstow made 86 not out off 60. Oh, and the 90mph debutant Gus Atkinson took 4 for 20.English cricket is in a very fun place. Problems of luxury are falling out of their ears and someone who has done absolutely nothing wrong is going to be left out of a World Cup squad and spend their dying days cursing the ground that Rob Key walks.The 95-run win at Old Trafford taught us nothing that we didn’t already know and reaffirmed the one truism of this England white-ball era: that they are really, really, good.Related
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“It just happened,” Bairstow said of England’s explosion that saw him and fellow Yorkshireman Brook add 131 off 65 balls together. “You obviously fancy a couple of bowlers and he hit a couple of magnificent shots and that just kickstarts momentum.”We had a chuckle the other day because we haven’t actually batted that much together and we were saying ‘come on, we’re due a decent partnership’ so hopefully that’s the first of a few.”But England know Bairstow is good and they know that Brook is good. What they didn’t know was how Atkinson, on debut, would respond to international cricket, only for him to deliver in spades. Opening the bowling, he was clocked north of 90mph by the Sky cameras second ball and had Devon Conway caught on the square leg boundary from his fourth. His first two overs went for just 12 runs, before he returned with New Zealand 95 for 7 and wrapped up victory with three wickets in five balls. The first rushed Tim Seifert on the pull, which went directly into the night sky, before he trapped Tim Southee lbw and clean bowled Lockie Ferguson. Job done. The back-up debutant proving why England are World Champions. Their newbies are better than your oldies.At 25, Atkinson is relatively inexperienced with just 60 senior appearances to his name. He is five months older than Surrey team-mate and childhood friend Sam Curran and yet has played 290 fewer professional matches. But the fact is he can bowl quickly, accurately and at people’s faces – and much like starting a recipe with garlic, butter and chilli, it’s really quite hard to muck things up from there.”You hear of people that have raw pace,” Bairstow said of the whispers that had been circulating about Atkinson before his maiden international call-up. “Because there’s only a certain number of people who have those credentials and are able to bowl at the higher echelon of speed. So you naturally hear about their rise because if you’re able to do that it’s something that needs to be taken note of and no surprise that it’s happened so quickly.Harry Brook launches a drive for six over the covers•ECB via Getty Images”You look at when Jofra [Archer, who Atkinson has regularly been compared to] came on the scene and how quickly he was elevated through…we know that pace is the one thing that’s a rare commodity here and around the world and can be devastating when you get it right. I think that’s going to be the first cap of a few, definitely in this format and I’m sure in a few others as well.”This was an evening where England cricketers played caricatures of themselves. Moeen Ali waltzed to the crease at No. 5 – promoted above Buttler, playing the club captain role of sliding down the order to give others a go – and walloped his first ball for six, before whacking his second down Adam Milne’s throat on the midwicket boundary to depart for the purist’s innings of 6 off 2. Meanwhile, Adil Rashid came on after the powerplay and picked up a wicket in his first over: a low full-toss to Glenn Phillips who plopped it to Brook at long-on. An Australian politician got done the other day for accidentally watching the wrong Matildas match, a 1-0 win against France in a friendly played in July, as opposed to the penalty shootout victory in the World Cup quarter-final in August. Sometimes sport has happened before.England’s magic touch even extended to the revolution of Brydon Carse as a T20 bowler. His 3 for 23 in the opening fixture were his best-ever T20 figures and he followed it up with another strong showing here, nicking off Daryl Mitchell first ball. Coming into this match, his T20 record was borderline abysmal – boasting an average of 42 to compliment an economy rate of nine. But he’s tall, quick, can bat and is South African – aka, he’s the perfect Englishman. Just sauté butter, chilli and garlic until soft, add a splash of wine, season to taste and voila, you are England’s T20 cap No. 100.England’s wealth of options extended to giving Will Jacks an over, in which he picked up the wicket of Mitchell Santner clean bowled swinging for the hills as New Zealand crumbled in a heap, losing their last seven wickets for 31 runs. Livingstone, so far going under the radar in the Brook selection debate, contributed with one over that went for 16 but also picked up the wicket of Mark Chapman who was caught at long-on aiming for a fourth boundary of the over. Livingstone bowled excellently in the opening match and is yet to do much wrong, but he may well need a match where he does everything right between now and the end of September to cement a place on the plane.Atkinson’s triple-wicket finish was the icing on a cake England had finished long before the win was finally secured. At the press conference after play, Bairstow described the performance as “far from perfect”. God only knows what’s left to improve.
