England vs Sri Lanka: Jonny Bairstow is like Red Adair - fighting fires appears to be his calling

Hauling his team from the mire, especially here, is something of a speciality for Yorkshireman, writes Derek Pringle

Jonny Bairstow salutes the Headingley crowd after reaching his half century (Stu Forster/Getty Images)

Jonny Bairstow has Headingley in his DNA. Just as well too, England were ailing badly on 83 for five when he strode to the crease full of purposeful, red-headed energy that he quickly turned into restorative runs.

It was classic counter-attack. Not the headlong thrash favoured by Ben Stokes, who perished for 12 after dealing only in boundaries. But by a mix of hard-run twos and his own slew of fours and sixes, the bad ball picked off with all the disdain of Simon Cowell despatching bits of fluff from an expensive jacket.

Hauling his team from the mire, especially at the ground, is something of a Bairstow speciality, his batting heroics having rescued Yorkshire more than once here in the past two seasons.

Jonny Bairstow cuts a ball to the boundary during day one of the first Test (Stu Forster/Getty Images)

Not that he recognises it as a special talent, at least publicly. Indeed, when it was put to him recently that 42 for three must press a special competitive button within him, he played it down. And yet, like Red Adair, fighting fires appears to be his calling.

Not that it had been apparent before last season. Prior to that, a serious talent had been recognised but many felt it lacked reliability. They were probably right, and a weakness against the short ball set him back until it was overcome by sheer graft and a relentless peppering from short balls in the nets.

The turning point for the dynamic, confident, savvy batsman seen here, and against South Africa last winter, came last season in a white ball game against New Zealand. Called into the squad late after Jos Buttler injured his hand, Bairstow won a match that looked well beyond England (they needed 192 off 26 overs) with a brilliant, unbeaten 83.

When players uncertain of their place win games against the odds like that, epiphanies often follow. For Bairstow, who had dealt with the enormous burdens of his father David’s suicide and his mother’s cancer, at an early age, it was confirmation that things could go right for him.

Happily, he has not sat back on his laurels and when Buttler was dropped from the Test team last winter, he piled into the breach with breezy gusto as England’s wicket-keeper batsman, to the point where many feel he could easily bat at number five and hand the gloves back from whence they came.

The selectors probably fear that removing one of the strings to his bow might heap unnecessary pressure on him, but the nervy Bairstow of a few years ago now looks a mirage - the talented boy with a bat becoming a batsman proper last season when he averaged over 92.33 for Yorkshire as they won the County Championship.

That was the season when the folk up here reckon Bairstow’s talent acquired an extra dimension - savviness. Instead of bowlers setting him up with the bouncer or lbw, he kept them guessing, sometimes ducking sometimes hooking. In the words of one onlooker, he learnt to play the situation as well as the individual balls within it.

One of several batting successes in South Africa, Bairstow was the only one to deliver here as well against a modest Sri Lanka side. Players never admit to complacency, but with their opponents struggling against second division counties in the build-up to this Test, it would be against human nature to not be a little blasé.

And yet, you do so at your peril as Dasun Shanaka revealed when he took three wickets in his first three overs on his Test debut.

Averaging a modest 73mph, Shanaka nevertheless observed the old saw of Headingley that predicts rewards coming to those who pitch the ball up around off-stump.

Alastair Cook reacts after being caught out off the bowling of Dasun Shanaka (Getty)

With Alastair Cook edging behind for 16, then Nick Compton and Joe Root following for ducks, Shanaka, who’d only bowled 129 overs in his first-class career before this match, was suddenly threatening a rout.

Headingley also rewards patient batsmen who wait to score off the back foot, something ignored by England’s top order who were all out playing fast and loose off the front foot.

Fortunately for England, following brief stays by Stokes and James Vince, Bairstow was on hand to join Hales in a so far unbroken stand of 88. Driving only when the ball was right under his nose but standing tall to belt anything short, Bairstow, who survived two reviews, one by him and one by Sri Lanka, was the dominant partner, another disaster at Headingley stayed.