Ashes 2015: Jonny Bairstow's gets latest chance to prove that he belongs

He has made it back to the Test team by forcing the selectors to pick him because of his sheer weight of runs

Jonny Bairstow is interviewed by Sky Sports after day three of the LV County Championship division one match between Yorkshire and Worcestershire on Tuesday (Getty Images)

Five runs, five lousy runs, altered the course of Jonny Bairstow’s career. Had he scored them he would have made himself, if hardly indispensable, then probably undroppable for England’s next Test match.

As it was, he was out for 95 and, although he followed it with an equally well-crafted 54 in the second innings he was cast out to the periphery of Test selection. A century would have made the difference. Selectors find it hard to overlook a man who has made a century but 95, well, 95 is a glorified fifty.

Bairstow’s highest international score to date was described in glowing terms and, according to this newspaper, after he came in at 54 for 4 “his stoicism and measured batting averted a crisis that was rapidly engulfing England”. His calm second innings drew the conclusion that “England might have found one”. Who knows what might have happened?

That was at Lord’s for the third Test against South Africa in August 2012. By Ahmedabad for the first Test against India in November he was not in the team and since then he has never really been on the inside. True, he was allowed seven consecutive Tests the following year but that run only started because Kevin Pietersen was injured. It was Pietersen whom Bairstow had replaced at Lord’s when the former was dropped after his first serious schism with the team management.

Until now, Bairstow has struggled to convince England that he truly belongs. He has won 14 Test caps, which have involved four recalls. The last time he appeared was as the wicketkeeper at the end of the ill-starred 2013-14 Ashes when Matt Prior was omitted. Bairstow was boarding a ship that had already sunk and joined it at the bottom of the sea.

He is a feisty individual, who is engaging but averse to criticism when he thinks it ill deserved. Those who have had occasion to pass mild comment on his wicketkeeping skills have risked a stare and a harsh word, daring them to back up their claims with some facts.

There is no question that Bairstow is a player for the big occasion. A prodigious schoolboy cricketer at St Peter’s, York, he was always destined to follow his father, David, as Yorkshire’s wicketkeeper-batsman.

Bairstow’s major champion is Geoffrey Boycott who was a friend and team-mate of David, who played four Tests for England. After David died, Boycott remained close to the family and paid devoted attention to Jonny’s burgeoning career.

It was Boycott who presented Jonny with his cap the night he made an immediate impression as an England cricketer. Selected belatedly to play in the final one-day international of the 2011 season against India he went in at 166 for 4 with England rapidly running out of overs in a rain-affected match. Bairstow walloped three sixes, making 41 from 21 balls, and wondered what all the fuss was about.

Since then, he has played only eight more ODIs. Maybe his wicketkeeping has complicated the issue, maybe his face and his style have not quite fitted. He does not seem to have been treated as well as some others have been by the selectors.

The last time he played for England was spectacular. At Chester-le-Street earlier this summer, the one-day series was on the line. Bairstow had driven up the motorway from home because of an injury to Jos Buttler, who had cut the webbing on a hand the day before the match.

The target was again amended because of the weather but England were left to make 192 in 25 overs to overtake New Zealand’s 283 and win a coruscating series. It was 40 for 4 when Bairstow went in and soon it was 40 for 5. People started leaving the ground, reporters wrote their accounts of England’s defeat.

Bairstow made nonsense of the pursuit. With Sam Billings of Kent he put on 80 from 57 balls for the sixth wicket and went on himself to score 83 from 60 balls with 11 fours which were precisely, confidently placed on a large playing area. It was a sizzling innings, perfectly capturing the refashioned England, the England who are determined to play cricket fit for the 21st century.

This sixth coming as a Test cricketer is a formidable task for Bairstow. He played the first four Tests of the 2013 Ashes series and while he was not a failure nor was he a success. England felt they needed something and experimented boldly, foolhardily for the final Test.

Bairstow’s involvement since has been as the reserve wicketkeeper, first on the following winter’s tour to Australia, then in the West Indies this year. He knew that he had to spend his time carrying drinks and if he did not like it he did so willingly.

Between times he was forever asking for the latest Yorkshire score in the Championship. Bairstow is the kind of Yorkshireman who probably has a vase of white roses placed permanently on their sitting-room windowsill lest anyone doubt his allegiance.

The only way to make it back to the Test team was to force the selectors to pick him because of his sheer weight of runs. He has done so. This season has brought him five hundreds in a Yorkshire team which seems miles ahead of the rest. He is in a sequence where everything his bat touches turns to runs. Australia will pepper him with some short stuff but at 25 he is better equipped to cope. This is his chance finally to have a Test career. If he reaches 95, he knows what he had better do.