ENG vs NZ Live Update: Jonny Bairstow, a renowned wicketkeeper and batsman for England, expressed his gratitude to the Indian Premier League (IPL) for giving him the “gears” to play the best innings of his life. On the last day of the second Test match, which took place on Tuesday, June 14, at Trent Bridge in Nottingham, Bairstow produced a magnificent century against New Zealand, the current champions of the World Test Championship.
On the fifth day of the match, England successfully chased down the goal of 299 runs and earned some key points to move ahead in the WTC points table. Bairstow’s century and Ben Stokes’ unbroken half-century were both instrumental in this success. Bairstow’s century was the second-fastest by any English batsman, as he achieved the benchmark in only 77 deliveries. The record was held by Gilbert Jessop, who took 76 balls to complete his century. Bairstow took one ball more than Jessop.
“There were a lot of individuals who told me that I should not be playing cricket in the IPL and that I should be playing county cricket instead. People say it would be fantastic if you had four games of red-ball cricket under your belt (before a Test series), but unfortunately, that doesn’t happen with the current scheduling of everything around the world,” he was quoted as saying by Cricket 365.
We see it as a great blessing to be able to compete in the Indian Premier League: Jonny Bairstow
The 32-year-old batsman was a member of the Punjab Kings squad that competed in the IPL 2022 and contributed many key innings that led to the team’s triumph. He decided to participate in the Indian Premier League rather than join Yorkshire for the County Championship. After the completion of the financially lucrative competition, he went on to play in the test series against New Zealand. He thinks that skipping a domestic cricket match to play in a league game centered on a franchise is not a smart option, but he is content with the choice he made to do so.
“Choices are decisions, and if I could say what I wanted to then… I guess it doesn’t matter. However, there are aspects of it in which you are competing against some of the finest players in the world in the Indian Premier League. It is essential to have access to those gears and to be able to navigate through the gears and alter them up or down as needed. We are really lucky to be able to compete against some of the top players in the world in some of the most prestigious championships. Therefore, when it comes to high-pressure scenarios, the more you can put yourself in such high-pressure situations, the better since it shows that you’ve gone through it in the past,” he said.
Next week, the elegant batter will make his return to play when England takes on New Zealand in the third and final Test match of the series at Headingley in Leeds, commencing on Thursday, June 23.
