A Clear Blue Sky

by Jonny Bairstow

  (© Adrian Murrell/Allsport UK/Getty Images)

  What made my dad a success were ‘good hands’. When I was a young child, he used to plonk me on the roof of the car and I’d slide down the windscreen and across the slope of the bonnet. He’d be waiting to catch me as low as he could to the ground. There was another game, similar to that one, which my Uncle Ted says always delighted me but slightly alarmed him, even though he knew I was perfectly safe. My dad and my half-brother Andrew would throw me between them, as though I was a ball. As that song says about the daring trapeze artist, I flew through the air with the greatest of ease, apparently.

  I have a pair of my dad’s half-stitched wicketkeeping gloves, which are thin and flimsy compared with the much better padded modern equipment. The gloves remind me of him, but also of what being a wicketkeeper meant – and still means – physically.

  At the beginning of my dad’s career, the helmet hadn’t been introduced to the game. At the end of it, a wicketkeeper still didn’t wear one standing up to the stumps. So you were always vulnerable to a top edge in the mouth or a crack across the face. He tolerated wear-and-tear injuries: hamstring and Achilles tendon strains, a bad lower back. At the end of one season only an anaesthetic spray and a thick Heineken bar towel, wrapped tightly around his midriff, got him on to the field at all.

  Of course, his hands took most punishment.

  He and Uncle Ted used to greet one another with a one-armed hug and a handshake, carried out simultaneously. As my dad got older, the handshake became more difficult for him; so difficult that he almost stopped doing it, according to Uncle Ted. A lifetime of wicketkeeping left his fingers, especially on his right hand, gnarled and a little misshapen. That’s what happens when, hour after hour for day after day, you take a ball that’s coming at you with a lot of heat behind it. That’s why Alan Knott, for example, stuck strips of Plasticine in his gloves, attempting to cushion the pounding his palms took. That’s why George Duckworth bought cuts of beef from a butcher to do the same job. There was a flaw in that plan, however. In hot weather first and second slip wanted to be as far away from him as possible because the meat rotted and began to stink. But neither Knott nor Duckworth went as far as a predecessor of theirs. Herbert Strudwick was a wicketkeeping innovator for Surrey and England during the 1920s. Every night he soaked his hands in his own urine, arguing that it firmed and toughened up his flesh. It’s not a theory I’ve ever been tempted to try.

  Nowadays a wicketkeeper wears and discards two or three pairs of gloves per summer. Traditional thinking in my dad’s day dictated that you used one pair of gloves for a whole season at least; for wicketkeepers bedded their gloves in, attempting to mould them to the shape of their hands like a second skin. So I know the pair that are a family heirloom contain the impression of his hands, as surely as if he’d just taken them off. When I was a boy, I could lay my own hands flat against those gloves and see how tiny they looked in comparison to his. Sometimes I’d put them on, the gloves feeling big and floppy as I tried to push my small fingers into the ends of them. It was like sliding your feet into shoes four sizes too large and expecting to walk in them. I couldn’t close the gloves, the leather was too stiff and cumbersome for the little strength I had then.

  But, when I had them on, it was like holding hands with him.

  CHAPTER 5

  THE KINGDOM BY THE SEA

  When you walk out of the dressing room at Headingley and head down the tunnel to the pitch, you pass a banner in Yorkshire’s colours. It hangs from the ceiling like a standard in a medieval court. The white rose decorates almost the bottom third of it. Sitting above are two sentences, comprising 17 words. Familiarity means that you soon learn to memorise them:

  There Is a Place in Yorkshire’s History Waiting for You.

  Are You Ready to Join the Legends?

  Yorkshire has so much history, almost too much to consume, purely because of those legends. From Tom Emmett to the troublesome genius of Bobby Peel. From George Hirst to the indefatigable Wilfred Rhodes, who was still playing at the age of 53. From Major Booth, never to return from the Great War, to a score – and more – of eminent others, among them Len Hutton, Hedley Verity and Herbert Sutcliffe, and also the quartet of Trueman, Close, Illingworth and Boycott. No county has a history quite like Yorkshire’s, and you’re always aware of it. However much change occurs, the past is always tangible in the present – and it always will be.

  The faces from yesteryear stare back at you from countless photographs, a family album like no other. Their bats, the edge as thin as a credit card compared with today’s jumbo-sized blocks of wood, sit behind glass in the club’s museum. Beside them are caps and sweaters, gleaming medals in boxes inlaid with silk, and cricket balls mounted on silver plinths. The leather is cracked, the seams flat and grey and ragged, but the plate inscriptions accompanying these old balls will tell you that, when shiny new, someone once took a prize haul of wickets with each of them.

  Yorkshire’s Championships, starting in 1893, are preserved in gold leaf at Headingley too. That list, of teams that only understood success, isn’t just about boastfulness or pride. Its primary purpose, I know, is to remind every one of us about whose boot prints we constantly walk in – and what we’re expected to achieve as a consequence. Even outside the dressing room, running along the labyrinth of corridors that the public doesn’t see, you’ll find George Macaulay or Maurice Leyland or the title winners of 1919 looking you in the eye from big display boards that detail what each of them did. It’s some roll of superior wallpaper, I can tell you.

  You play as a part of all this history, conscious of it trailing behind. You’re another branch in an ancestral tree stretching further back even than Lord Hawke. But Yorkshire doesn’t stop there. You’re told, as soon as you become part of the club, that it’s your responsibility to inspire the next generation the way the previous one had inspired you. You’re educated from the start in the ways of Yorkshire. Even when I played for the under-11s I was taught values – the etiquette of being a Yorkshire cricketer, I suppose – and also old-school stuff. We faced other counties who looked scruffy, a bit ragtag – more like a collection of individuals than a team. We were different. You had to wear your Yorkshire blazer at lunch. You had to conduct yourself maturely. Strops, petulance and unpunctuality weren’t tolerated. You had to turn out immaculately, your whites uncreased and well laundered and the rest of your kit pristine. In his teens my dad had what he called a ‘great bat’, a ‘really whippy’ thing. The ball, he said, came off it like ‘nobody’s business’. He used it in the Bradford League, but never in the Championship. ‘It was too filthy,’ he explained, knowing that Yorkshire’s committee would have frowned and tut-tutted as soon as he drew it out of his bag. Appearances were so important.

  It can be difficult to explain to anyone unfamiliar with Yorkshire why cricket matters so much here and why it is so integral to the county, as much a part of it as the Dales and the coastline, the market towns, the once-industrial cities and the isolated moors. Cricket has been bred in the bone for so long that Yorkshire has drawn an important sense of itself from it. Yorkshire firmly believes it is God’s Own Country; and it also believes that God’s own game is cricket. It isn’t only enjoyed. It is studied with serious commitment. For some – especially in the leagues – it is a way of living, every winter wished away. What’s ‘nobbut a game’ to others is never so for them. To slightly misquote that immortal Wilfred Rhodes, cricket hasn’t ever been played purely for ‘fun’ in Yorkshire. Winning matches is too important, the be all and end all of everything. You could even claim that the rowing and infighting which blighted the decades without a Championship were a demonstration of how much Yorkshire cared about its cricket and how much was expected of those who played it. My dad suggested it was so. Asked why passions tended to boil over so frequently at Headingley, and why everyone had always something to say about it, he replied: ‘Because our heart’s in it.’ His certainly was – and mine is too
.

  I remember when Yorkshire took me on, aged 15. With my mum sitting alongside me, I waited on the hard chairs outside the club’s office as one lad after another went in and then came out again. If you emerged empty handed, you’d been told that your services were sadly no longer needed. If you were clutching a large white envelope, you’d got your contract. My ‘interview’ lasted less than ten minutes. I came out with my envelope, feeling as though a winning lottery ticket was inside it.

  I first went on to the field in the County Championship on a cold early-August Saturday at Headingley in 2008. Almost no one noticed me.

  I was nominally 13th man, meant to fetch and carry if necessary. More specifically, I was there to absorb the atmosphere and get to know some of the players a bit better, hear the banter and pick up a tip or two. Yorkshire had labelled me as someone for their future; that fact was clear and also comforting. Were it not for one thing, the game – against Surrey – would go down as a mundane, rain-hit, end-of-season tussle about relegation, which we went on to avoid … and Surrey didn’t. You’d have to rake hard through your mind, or search the pages of Wisden, to summon a solid memory of it.

  Mark Ramprakash alone made it worthwhile. He’d made 99 first-class centuries and was on the verge of becoming only the 25th batsman to reach his hundredth hundred in first-class matches, joining Grace and Hobbs, Hutton and Hammond, Richards and Bradman and the rest. Even then we knew that the achievement would be especially historic because no one would ever pass this way again; the calendar wouldn’t allow it. The Championship has contracted so much, and doubtlessly will contract again soon. A batsman would need a career lasting 30 years or more – and then he’d still have only half a chance of racking up enough games to emulate what Ramprakash did.

  I’d get to know and like Ramprakash later on, after he became one of England’s batting coaches. But at the time he was only another of those prolific scorers whose statistics told you how classy he’d been, the sort of player you’d pay to watch and be glad to finish your career one run behind. He’d scored over 35,000 runs, including a triple hundred. Ramprakash, then 39 years old, had gone ten innings without a fifty, but there are always moments in life that seem meant to be. He’d scored his first hundred at Headingley 19 years before for Middlesex. Now he could close the circle and complete a neat piece of symmetry. I’d expected to watch him do it from the dressing room, but first one of our team came off for treatment and then another followed him. Like the last man thrust into battle simply because no one else is available, I found myself dashing towards the square, my name announced in muffled tones over the loudspeaker. I looked around me, not entirely believing it.

  Darren Gough was in charge. In terms of effort, energy and approach – the belief that a faint heart never won a jot of anything and also the absolute certainty that you could force a result simply through will and conviction – Gough could have feasibly belonged to my dad’s side of the Bairstow clan. He was sure perspiration was the prerequisite for inspiration. My dad felt that way too. Gough was equally sure that you could encourage and cajole anyone into achieving anything, however far-fetched the scenario seemed at the time. My dad thought the same. He was also the sort of captain who regarded the front as the only place to be. Occupying it was a moral obligation to him; you couldn’t possibly lead from anywhere else. Gough roused you to be better than you were, and he understood everything about the game except the cricketer who didn’t attempt to give 210 per cent. He always did, performing as a one-man battalion. That was another aspect he and my dad had in common. I’ve been told a score of times – and that’s a very conservative estimate – that my dad and Gough were kindred spirits, so alike that each was pretty much a mirror image of the other in temperament. My dad was there for Gough’s Championship debut – at Lord’s in 1989 – but made only another three Championship appearances alongside him before his career petered out. If the two of them had belonged to the same generation, the impact of a Bairstow–Gough combination on Yorkshire could conceivably have been seismic. Those barren years of the 1970s would never have happened. I wonder, though, how anyone else would have got a word in edgeways in the dressing room.

  Knowing all this about Gough in advance ought to have forewarned me. I should have realised that I’d be tested. I initially supposed that he’d wave me into the outfield, where I’d be safely out of Ramprakash’s line of fire. I thought I’d be posted to long leg or third man, perhaps. Gough knew, though, that I was a wicketkeeper, which to him immediately equated to ‘safe hands’. And if I was good enough to be part of the squad, I was good enough not to be nursed along. ‘Stand next to me in the slips,’ he said. What could I do? I had enough gumption, but certainly couldn’t summon the courage, to argue or tell him that I’d rather go somewhere less conspicuous. I meekly went to second slip as ordered, trying not to look petrified. I was only there for 14 balls, but I spent each of them afraid that someone – especially Ramprakash, who was in the mid-70s by then – would get an edge. I had an image of the ball homing in on me like a missile.

  The pros at Yorkshire always came to talk to those of us who one day would replace them. You helpfully found out what a bumpy ride the Championship could be before going on it yourself. Or, at least, that was the idea. That afternoon I discovered no amount of information entirely prepares you for it. You had to be in the thick of things to know what the step-up really entailed. Even being at a game was no adequate gauge. The ball was travelling around much faster than anything I’d ever come across before. I wasn’t certain whether my reactions would be quick enough to take a catch – or whether I’d cling on to it if I did. Keeping my hands warm was difficult enough. The prospect of grassing a chance preyed on my mind.

  Ramprakash got his century at 4.12 p.m., a forcing shot to a short ball that he sent wide of backward point. The match stopped for five minutes as he acknowledged the congratulations of his own team and the standing ovation of the crowd. I was mercifully back in the dressing room by then, applauding like everyone else. When my brief ordeal was over, I’d run off feeling more relief than elation. But I was also aware that, having survived without a scare, the next time would be easier, less daunting for me. I’d know what was coming.

  I only had to wait another ten months to prove myself right.

  I could have written the newspaper stories myself, each of them understandably dominated by my dad’s career and all the speculation about whether I could come close to emulating it. ‘Bairstow isn’t a bad name to have,’ said one report. Another wondered if I’d be a ‘chip off the old block’. In others there were summaries of his career, each glowing with facts and figures and recognising his contribution to Yorkshire. The pieces resembled short eulogies.

  Comparisons between us were always being made. I’d got used to them, especially so when I broke into the academy at Headingley. It was easy copy to file, and I couldn’t complain about that. Asked about him, I’d give an answer that may have seemed a little understated and perhaps even enigmatic to anyone who expected a long statement full of telltale emotion. ‘Dad’s career was Dad’s career,’ I’d say. ‘If I can do half of what he did, I’ll have a decent career myself.’

  I wasn’t attempting to be deliberately defensive. Or to deter follow-up questions about his death; about what that meant to me and the family; about the chance of another Yorkshire son successfully following his father into the side the way that Richard Hutton had once followed Len or that Ryan Sidebottom had later followed Arnie. I expected to be placed side by side with my dad, the match-up was unavoidable. But I didn’t want anyone to think I was – or could ever be – an exact duplicate. His character was unique; he was a very singular man with a very singular approach. So my sober line about Dad’s career being Dad’s career was said to put all that into perspective. I meant it – and also what came next – honestly. ‘I’m proud of him,’ I’d say.

  I was nineteen and three quarters, so I don’t imagine many of Yorkshire’s members had seen me
play. For about a month or so before my debut – against Somerset at Headingley – there’d been a handful of publicly dropped hints about a possible call-up sooner rather than later. It was as though the club didn’t want it to be a surprise to me or to anyone else. I came into the side as a batsman, finally forcing my way in on the back of an unbeaten double century against Leicestershire Second XI at Oakham when defeat had loomed.

  We were three down for 44 against Leicestershire, needing 400 to win, and I was batting with Joe Root. Craig White was in charge of us. He’d been a combative all-rounder: more than 12,000 runs and almost 400 wickets. He was born in Morley, almost within sight of Headingley, but partly grew up near Melbourne in a small, former gold-mining town. On arrival, a fellow pupil told him: ‘My dad thinks that the only good pom is a dead one.’ White replied by punching him on the jaw. He made 30 Test appearances for England, including an emergency summons into the Ashes series of 2002–03.

  He was then playing Grade cricket in Adelaide and living with his sister, who happened to be Darren Lehmann’s wife. White didn’t have any suitable boots, so his sister opened up her garage and told him to take a pair of Lehmann’s. When White went in to bat, facing Glen McGrath – it was the first Test in Brisbane – he found his brother-in-law at short leg. Lehmann glanced down at his feet. ‘You’ve got my ******* boots on,’ he said. He even yelled across to Shane Warne, who was fielding in the slips: ‘The ******’s got my ******* boots on.’ Lehmann promptly ordered McGrath to take his toes off.