Kevin Pietersen, who retired as England’s second-highest run-scorer of all time with 13,797 across all formats, in his blog, he expressed his delight in Jonny Bairstow joining the Test arena.
Johnny Bairstow, 32, made his debut versus West Indies at Lord’s in 2012. So far he has played around 21 Tests, 8 ODIs, and 40 T20 matches.
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Pietersen says that he has always seen Test cricket as an opportunity to score quickly since there are many gaps in the field. He recalled the unfortunate times when he was ridiculed and abused on getting out in his days ten years ago. That way of playing was never looked at very fondly, he further says. It was similar to how Ben Stokes got out recently at Headingley.
However, he confesses that in today’s time, such cricket is encouraged. This is more evident in the case of Jonny Bairstow. Pietersen also says that Jonny has played in past, some really intrepid shots in “shorter forms'' of cricket. So, he thinks it is amazing to see him joining the clash.
Pietersen admits that he has always liked, and has always appreciated Johnny’s talent ever since they both were teammates at the start of Johnny’s career. Pietersen also applauded the candidness of Bairstow when he said that it was the IPL (Indian Premier League) that has helped him immensely.
Pietersen takes pride in watching Bairstow brilliantly bat at the top of the order with legends like David Warner for Sunrisers Hyderabad in IPL. According to him, Bairstow has improved a lot in his game since his early days and seems to be now enjoying “taking (the) centre stage”.
Bairstow, according to the former English player, has now got used to playing in front of huge crowds. He takes pleasure in facing the fast bowlers and seizing the moment.
“It now comes naturally to him to be the hero when his team needs him. I’m delighted for him because it hasn’t always been an easy ride and it means so much to him”, says Pietersen in the post.
England, according to him, is slowly improving its team. Players like Jonny Bairstow, Joe Root, Ben Stokes, Alex Lees, and Ollie Pope to name a few are the strong reasons for the team to post huge scores in the upcoming match.
These players, says Pietersen, even often rolled for just a score of 80s and 90s, could now definitely play amazingly till scoring 500 or 550 in a single day.
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