There are batsmen who seize the imagination, and there are batsmen who seize control of a Test match. Jonathan Trott belongs unmistakably to the second category.
He does not possess the theatrical violence of Kevin Pietersen, the silken range of Ian Bell, or the increasingly imposing presence of Alastair Cook. There is little about Trott that appears designed for a highlights reel. His cricket is built instead upon repetition: the familiar shuffle, the still head, the bat descending straight, the clip through midwicket, the leave outside off stump, and then the same sequence beginning again.
And yet, after only 20 Tests, the numbers have become almost absurd.
Trott averages 64.24 in Test cricket. Among players with substantial Test careers, only Don Bradman's 99.94 stands clearly beyond comparison. Graeme Pollock finished at 60.97, George Headley at 60.83 and Herbert Sutcliffe at 60.73. Among contemporary batsmen, even Jacques Kallis and Sachin Tendulkar sit below the statistical territory Trott presently occupies.
Twenty Tests are not a career. But they are enough to establish that this is no longer merely an extraordinary beginning. Something important has happened to England's batting order.
Jonathan Trott has turned Number 3 from a problem into a position of strength.
The Oval: Where the Story Changed
It is difficult now to remember quite how uncertain England were before the final Test of the 2009 Ashes.
They had been dismantled at Headingley. Ravi Bopara's confidence had disappeared. England's apparently eternal search for a No. 3 had begun again. There were calls, some serious and some desperate, for Marcus Trescothick, Mark Ramprakash or Robert Key.
Instead England selected a 28-year-old Warwickshire batsman born in Cape Town.
Trott made 41 in the first innings at The Oval. Then, with an Ashes series balanced on the final Test, he made 119 in the second. It was an extraordinary debut not simply because of the runs, but because of the circumstances in which they were made. Trott seemed remarkably undisturbed by an occasion that might have overwhelmed a younger or less certain batsman.
England regained the Ashes. Trott had scored 160 runs in his first Test.
More importantly, they had accidentally, or perhaps finally, found their number 3.
That distinction matters.
A successful batsman is not necessarily a successful number 3. The position requires something peculiar. He may be summoned in the second over and effectively become an opener. He may arrive at 150 for 1 and be required to maintain momentum. He may have to repair an innings, absorb the best spell of the opposition's quickest bowler, or bat long enough to allow more adventurous players around him to attack.
England had tried several technically gifted batsmen there. Trott looked as though he had been constructed for it.
The Architecture of Trott
The most revealing thing about Trott's batting is how little of it appears accidental.
His game has architecture.
He marks his crease meticulously and settles deep into it. His stance is orthodox and predominantly side-on. The head remains remarkably still. His first movement is usually a small press forward, placing him in position to deal with the good-length ball.
From there, the options are deliberately limited.
That limitation is one of his great strengths.
Where Pietersen may see three scoring possibilities in a delivery, Trott often seems to see one. If the ball is straight, he plays straight. If it reaches his pads, he clips it through the leg side. If there is width, particularly once he is established, he cuts or drives.
If none of those opportunities exists, he is quite content not to score. There is almost an anti-modern quality to it.
Cricket increasingly celebrates the expansion of a batsman's options. Trott has built his success by reducing his.
His principal scoring areas tell the story. He is exceptionally productive through the V, but perhaps his most characteristic stroke is the firm clip from his pads through square leg or midwicket. Bowl too straight and he scores. Bowl too wide and, once settled, he cuts. Persist around off stump and he is prepared to leave.
The bowler is therefore confronted not by unpredictability, but by something that can be equally demoralising: certainty.
Trott knows where his runs are coming from.
Lord's, Zaheer and a Test of Method
The opening day of the 2,000th Test match, at Lord's this July, provided an unusually clear examination of that method.
Only 49.2 overs were possible. The sky was grey, the pitch had been freshened by rain, and India's seamers found considerable lateral movement.
Zaheer Khan was magnificent.
Before injury forced him from the field, his figures were 13.3 overs, 8 maidens, 18 runs and two wickets. Alastair Cook and Andrew Strauss had both disappeared. Praveen Kumar was moving the ball in both directions.
It was precisely the sort of morning on which a No. 3 can discover that the title is only a number on a team sheet.
Trott survived.
Not flawlessly.
Rahul Dravid dropped him on 8 from Harbhajan Singh's first delivery, and later another edge went unclaimed behind the wicket. Fortune was undoubtedly involved.
But survival in difficult Test conditions has rarely been an entirely aesthetic exercise.
What mattered was what Trott did with his fortune.
While other batsmen repeatedly played and missed, he gradually established his scoring areas. When the Indians attacked his pads he whipped them through the leg side. When the field shifted to close those opportunities, he found runs through the off side.
One moment against Praveen Kumar was particularly revealing. After a sequence dominated by outswing, Praveen produced the inswinger. It was exactly the variation designed to exploit a batsman who had begun anticipating movement away.
Trott adjusted late, brought the bat down and worked the ball past mid-on.
It was worth only a few runs.
Technically, it said considerably more.
He finished the interrupted first day unbeaten on 58, and eventually made 70. England won the Test by 196 runs.
The innings will never sit beside his great hundreds, but it illustrated why England value him so highly. When conditions demanded that somebody remain, Trott remained.
The Great Accumulation
The remarkable feature of Trott's career is that the Oval was not an isolated eruption.
It became a pattern.
In 2010 he made 226 against Bangladesh at Lord's, demonstrating that his appetite was not merely for survival but accumulation. Once Trott gets in, dismissing him and merely containing him begin to feel like different versions of the same problem.
Then came Australia.
England had travelled there many times carrying hope and returned carrying explanations. The 2010–11 side was different, and Trott was central to that difference.
At Melbourne he made an unbeaten 168, an innings entirely appropriate to the man: patient, methodical and progressively suffocating. England won the Ashes in Australia 3–1.
For a batsman whose career had begun amid England's uncertainty at No. 3, Trott had become one of the foundations of perhaps the country's most formidable Test side in generations.
Sri Lanka subsequently suffered the same treatment. Another double-century followed.
And now India, who arrived in England as the world's No. 1 Test side, have been beaten 4–0.
England have taken their ranking.
Trott has climbed to No. 2 in the ICC Test batting rankings.
The transformation from county batsman to one of the most statistically productive batsmen in international cricket has taken barely two years.
The Selfish Gene
Before Trott's Test debut, Dennis Amiss identified an attribute that might sound undesirable almost anywhere except a batting crease.
Trott, he suggested, possessed a "selfish gene."
It was a compliment.
The great accumulators have usually possessed it.
Rahul Dravid has it. Jacques Kallis has it. Alastair Cook increasingly appears to have it. Their first responsibility is not to entertain the spectator but to remain at the crease.
Trott understands that distinction instinctively.
A fast bowler does not care whether his No. 3 has produced the afternoon's most memorable stroke. He cares that, after spending the previous day bowling 25 overs, he can sit in the dressing room while somebody else spends six hours exhausting the opposition.
A captain values the same quality.
Trott's innings consume not only deliveries but resources. Bowlers return for fourth and fifth spells. The ball becomes older. Fields become defensive. The opposition's initial aggression is converted gradually into negotiation.
That is why his batting can be more destructive than it looks.
There is violence in cricket that appears on the scoreboard immediately.
Trott's violence is cumulative.
The One Vulnerability
No analysis of his extraordinary beginning should ignore the evidence against him.
There have been moments when Trott has looked considerably more mortal.
Johannesburg in 2009–10 was one. Perth during the Ashes was another.
Both offered significant bounce.
In those conditions Trott's familiar movements appeared less secure. He could be drawn outside off stump and made to play farther from his body than he prefers. The combination of genuine pace and steep bounce remains perhaps the most persuasive technical question that can be asked of him.
It is an important qualification.
But it is not yet a fatal one.
The modern international calendar does not frequently combine the extreme bounce of Perth or Johannesburg with sustained high pace. Until opponents can reproduce those conditions—or discover another method—Trott's compact game is exceptionally well suited to contemporary Test cricket.
Every great batsman eventually encounters the bowling plan designed specifically for him.
Trott's next evolution will begin when that plan becomes consistent.
More Than a Test Batsman
Perhaps the most surprising element of Trott's rise has been his success in one-day cricket.
His method initially appears almost too conservative for the format.
Then one looks at the scoreboard.
Trott has discovered that accumulation itself can be an attacking strategy. He rotates the strike, minimises dot-ball pressure, rarely gives his wicket away cheaply and allows more explosive batsmen to operate around him.
He has already been among the fastest batsmen to reach 1,000 ODI runs and was one of England's most dependable performers during the 2011 World Cup.
His innings of 63 at Cardiff against India this summer was another example of the method.
Trott does not attempt to turn himself into a different batsman because the clothing has changed colour.
He simply accelerates the same machinery.
The principle remains identical: reduce risk, identify repeatable scoring areas, occupy the crease and force the opposition to remove you.
Why Trott Matters to This England Side
Trott's significance extends beyond his own average.
England's batting order contains considerable attacking talent. Pietersen can dismantle an attack. Bell can make batting look almost indecently easy. Cook has developed an appetite for enormous innings. Eoin Morgan offers inventions.
Trott provides the structure connecting them.
His presence permits other batsmen to play differently because they know somebody at the other end is unlikely to surrender his wicket unnecessarily.
There is also a historical symmetry to his arrival.
Paul Collingwood spent years becoming England's emergency service: the batsman expected to survive when conditions deteriorated and wickets began falling. His Test career has now ended.
Trott offers many of the same psychological guarantees, but from No. 3 and with a considerably higher statistical ceiling.
That is an enormous luxury for Andrew Strauss.
England's fast bowlers have rightly received considerable praise during the team's ascent to No. 1. But bowling attacks function better when batsmen provide time, runs and rest.
Trott provides all three!
The Dangerous Word: Greatness
And so we arrive at the temptation.
After 20 Tests, Trott averages 64.24.
His first two years have included an Ashes-winning hundred on debut, a double-century at Lord's, an unbeaten 168 during a victorious Ashes campaign in Australia, another double-century against Sri Lanka, success in one-day cricket, the England Cricketer of the Year award and now the ICC Cricketer of the Year award.
The word great begins to hover nearby.
It should not yet be allowed to land.
Twenty Tests can reveal extraordinary ability. They cannot provide the evidence of longevity upon which genuine cricketing greatness depends.
Mike Hussey is an obvious warning. His Test career began at an almost ridiculous rate before gravity eventually reclaimed his average. International cricket studies its successful players relentlessly. Weaknesses are discovered. Bodies age. Reflexes slow. Form disappears. The second half of a career asks questions that the first half cannot.
Trott will experience those questions too.
But perhaps the most encouraging feature is that his game does not depend primarily upon youth.
It depends upon judgement, discipline, concentration and self-knowledge.
Those qualities can endure.
The Man Who Makes Repetition Beautiful
There will always be batsmen one would rather watch for twenty minutes.
Pollock must have been more exhilarating. Pietersen certainly can be. Tendulkar offers a range of strokes Trott would never contemplate.
But Test cricket is not a twenty-minute game.
Its deepest fascination comes from what happens after two hours, four hours, six hours—when technique becomes endurance and concentration becomes a contest in itself.
That is where Trott becomes compelling.
The ritual between deliveries, the crease marking, the settling of equipment, the intense return to concentration: they can irritate opponents and spectators, but they reveal something fundamental about him.
Trott attempts to make every delivery an independent event.
Nothing before it matters.
Nothing after it exists yet.
There is only the next ball.
Perhaps that explains the apparent mechanical quality of his batting. The machine is not merely technical. It is psychological.
He reduces one of sport's most complicated examinations to a repeatable sequence.
Watch the ball.
Move.
Decide.
Play.
Reset.
Repeat.
And repeat.
And repeat.
Until eventually it is the bowler, rather than Jonathan Trott, who begins to wonder how much longer this can continue.
England's Accidental Certainty
Two summers ago England were searching desperately for somebody to bat at No. 3.
Today they possess a man averaging more than 60, sitting near the summit of the world rankings and occupying one of the most important positions in the strongest Test side in international cricket.
There are younger English batsmen coming: James Taylor, Jonny Bairstow, Alex Hales, Adam Lyth and James Vince among them. Some will succeed; others will discover how enormous the distance remains between county promise and international permanence.
Trott may eventually become important to them as more than simply a run-scorer.
He represents an argument about batting.
Knowing one's limitations can be as valuable as expanding them.
That concentration is a skill rather than merely a virtue.
That leaving the ball can be an attacking act in the context of five days.
That occupying the crease changes matches.
And that there is still room, in an increasingly impatient game, for a batsman prepared to make the opposition wait.
Whether Jonathan Trott becomes an England legend cannot be answered on 25 August 2011.
There are too many innings still to play.
But after two astonishing years, we can say something else.
When Trott walked onto The Oval in August 2009, England were searching for a No. 3.
They found something rather more interesting: a batsman who has made permanence his form of attack.
Thank You
Faisal Caesar
No comments:
Post a Comment