England’s head coach Brendon McCullum feels it will be a really emotional moment for Jonny Bairstow when he will turn up for his 100th Test match in Dharamshala against India. Bairstow has been a consistent performer for England in the red-ball version but he hasn’t been at his best in the ongoing series.
The Yorkshire batter has scored 170 runs in four Test matches at an average of 21.25 and has failed to deliver the goods for the visitors. Ergo, Bairstow will be determined to prove his mettle in his milestone Test match.
The right-hander has amassed 5974 runs in 99 Test matches at an average of 36.43 and needs another 26 runs to get to the landmark of 6000 runs.
“Yes he’ll be playing his hundredth Test. We expect a good Jonny. Jonny loves a milestone too. He won’t shy away from that. He’ll play. It’ll be really emotional for him. Everyone knows Jonny’s story and as you guys will know he is quite an emotional character at times and big milestones like that do mean a lot to him. It’ll be a really emotional time for him and we look forward to sharing it with him,” McCullum said while speaking to the reporters on Tuesday.
On the other hand, the former New Zealand skipper showered praise on spin duo of Shoaib Bashir and Tom Hartley. While Bashir bagged eight wickets in the fourth Test at Ranchi, Hartley has scalped 20 wickets (the highest) in four matches of the series.
“Both of those guys have been outstanding in this series. When we picked Tom and Bash, there was probably a little bit of hesitation from others, and from us there was a bit of apprehension, too. We thought they had the skills, but will they be good enough at this level? What we’ve seen is they are definitely good enough. It will be a slight frustration of ours if they weren’t given opportunities at county level,” McCullum said.
The fifth and final Test match will be played at Himachal Pradesh Cricket Association Stadium, Dharamsala from March 7.
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