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First published by HarperCollinsPublishers 2017
SECOND EDITION
© Jonny Bairstow 2017
Cover design by Clare Ward © HarperCollinsPublishers 2017
Cover photograph © Adidas
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Jonny Bairstow asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
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Source ISBN: 9780008232696
Ebook Edition © October 2017 ISBN: 9780008232702
Version: 2018-05-10
To Mum, Dad and Boo
(© Author’s collection)
(© Author’s collection)
CONTENTS
PROLOGUE: EVERYTHING I’VE EVER STRIVED FOR, EVERYTHING I’VE EVER DONE
CHAPTER 1: THE VIEW FROM THE VERANDA
CHAPTER 2: I THINK YOU USED TO PLAY ALONGSIDE MY DAD
CHAPTER 4: KEEP IT SIMPLE, STUPID
CHAPTER 5: THE KINGDOM BY THE SEA
CHAPTER 6: THE POP AND FIZZ OF CHAMPAGNE
CHAPTER 7: THE SMALLEST ROOM AT LORD’S
CHAPTER 8: ARE YOU HERE FOR ALL THE TESTS?
CHAPTER 9: TWO PHOTOGRAPHS, TWO ERAS
CHAPTER 10: A DAMP DAY IN FRONT OF THE WESTERN TERRACE
PROLOGUE
EVERYTHING I’VE EVER STRIVED FOR, EVERYTHING I’VE EVER DONE
Cape Town, 3 January 2016
I’ve been batting for more than three and a half hours. I’ve faced 160 balls. I’m on 99 – a nudge, a nick, a heartbeat away from my first Test century.
Just one more run …
This South African afternoon is heavy with a dry heat. The sky, shining without clouds, is as bright as the blue in a child’s paint box, and the glare makes everything around me seem profoundly sharper: the sweep of a full, noisy ground, the purple-grey outline of Table Mountain and the jaggedness of Devil’s Peak, and even the vivid emerald of the outfield. In my head I’m talking all the time. I’m reminding myself, as I always do, of the simple things that are so damned difficult to get right. Stay focused. Appear calm, almost nonchalant. Don’t let the bowlers get on top. And don’t, on any account, show a sign of apprehension.
Between deliveries I’ve occasionally drifted out of my crease and patted down or brushed away some imaginary speck of dirt simply because I wanted something to do, something to keep me busy and alert. Or I’ve occupied myself in other ways: twirling my bat in my hand, tugging at my shirt and readjusting my helmet. These small tics are displacement, each designed to banish the sort of thoughts that can gremlin the mind. When you’re so close to a hundred, it’s easy to lose concentration. Your mind can go slack, wandering off abstractedly. Then the hard, sweaty graft that’s gone before is undone in a nanosecond. So I have to stay in the moment. I mustn’t get ahead of myself. I can’t afford to think about the relief I’ll feel when this is over and gone, already part of my statistical record. I can’t afford to think about how handsome my name, illuminated on the scoreboard in big capital letters, will look with three figures beside it. And I can’t afford to think about what the century will mean, professionally as well as personally. Most of all, I mustn’t dwell on how I will feel or how I will celebrate in the middle. Or how my mum Janet and my sister Becky, who are sitting near the pavilion, will feel and celebrate too. Or how proud I will make them – this week of all weeks.
In two days’ time it will be the family’s black anniversary: the date of my dad’s death in 1998. How quickly that always seems to come around. We mark it only among ourselves, and we do so very quietly, remembering the best of him rather than the tragedy of that day. New Year creeps up like a forewarning, and we get ourselves ready for the anniversary in