The former Hampshire cricketer and one of the renowned cricket pundits, Mark Nicholas, is of the view that it’s the “blue sky” thinking of the new England test team management which has brought the best out of Jonny Bairstow.
Mark Nicholas writes in his column for ESPNcricinfo that Jonny Bairstow is someone who has always wanted clear directions as a cricketer. He can never be at his best when he has a grey line of thinking in his head and for a large part of his career, he has probably had to deal with that grey line, because his role was not well defined.
Referring to Bairstow’s autobiography “A clear, blue sky”, Nicholas writes that because of Bairstow’s background right since his childhood days when his father, unfortunately, committed suicide, he has wanted to be valued as a person and as a professional and in the current England dressing room, he has got exactly that.
New England management has made Jonny Bairstow feel like a very important player: Mark Nicholas
The new England test management has made Bairstow feel like a very important member of the test squad and has given him all the freedom in the world to go out there and play his natural, attacking game. It has cleared Bairstow’s mind and has given him that “clear, blue sky” he has always wanted.
Nicholas reckons that Jonny Bairstow has now gone a level up as an international batsman and he is now at a level that has been achieved by some of the all-time greats of the game like Sachin Tendulkar and Viv Richards.
Nicholas didn’t make any direct comparisons of Bairstow with these players, but he did insist that the way Bairstow has started under this new England management, it seems he is only out of the blocks yet and there is a lot more to come in the future.
