With Kevin Pietersen currently resting his injured achilles in such locations as a poolside in Dubai and the clubhouse at Wentworth, there’s another South African-born big hitter filling his spikes. The Pietersen saga unfolded noisily a fortnight ago, but his 355* came in the first innings against Leicestershire, he did not bat in the second, and as he made his way to his meeting with the ECB, Surrey still had a match to win.
Surrey were set a target of 216 to win, with less than a session to do it in as Leicestershire dug in until after tea on the fourth day. Chasing a score in a short order, the Surrey batting line-up (minus Pietersen) lined up in T20 mode, with Jason Roy and Steven Davies opening.
Davies gave another reminder of his class, hammering 115 of those 216, bringing up his century in just 57 balls. But Roy was no slouch either, adding 67 from 39 balls before being caught on the boundary off Robert Taylor. Roy had made the early pace and carried much of the strike, but Davies accelerated after his opening partner had departed, continuing score heavily as first Kumar Sangakkara then Gary Wilson came and went.
Jason Roy, still only 24, has been a ‘star of the future’ for several years now. Last season’s T20 Blast saw him hit runs consistently, averaging 48.35 and playing his way to a T20 international debut. This season’s competition is only two matches old, but Roy has fallen cheaply in both, lasting just two balls against Essex and six against Glamorgan.
But those two poor showings were followed by a 140 against Northants: his top first-class score.
Consistency is the grail for batsmen in the longer form of the game. That’s why we measure their impact in averages. If you can rely on someone to get 40 every time they head to the middle, you’re on your way. Two innings do not a summer (or a career) make, but for a prodigiously talented swinger of the bat, finding your rhythm comes one score at a time.
Following a disappointing 2013, where Roy managed just four County Championship appearances and an average of just 8.16, it all came together in 2014. 677 T20 runs at that above 48 average, and more than a thousand Championship runs at a princely 51.33. This season, Roy’s average after four matches and six innings is 49.16, showing signs of that consistency.
Surrey CCC, for all their foibles, particularly in the bowling department, are a tremendous training ground for young batsmen. During his 140 against Northants, Roy shared a stand of 170 with Kumar Sangakkara — still the top ranked test batsman in the world. In the last few years Roy has shared a dressing room with a cavalcade of batting talent: Ponting, Amla, Graeme Smith, not to mention Pietersen. That rubs off. Learn how to drive from Sanga, how to pull from Ponting, how to sweep from Pietersen, and how to grit your teeth from Smith and you’d be one hell of a batsman.
But those are Test batsmen. Even Pietersen, for all his unorthodoxy and his aggression, could not be called a short form specialist. That’s the descriptor Roy has carried since his emergence for Surrey. He was included in this winter’s England Lions tour of South Africa, and made his ODI in the washout against Ireland earlier in this month, but the Test side seems an awfully long way away.
There’s a scene in the 1986 film “The Color of Money,” where a slightly grizzled Paul Newman turns to a fresh-faced Tom Cruise and complains that 9-ball pool is ‘for bangers’. Faster, fewer balls on the table, less thought, somehow less dignified. Newman’s Fast Eddie wasn’t a fan. “Maybe it is for bangers, but everybody’s doin’ it,” Tom Cruise’s Vince replies.
One of the great difficulties of modern cricket is batsmen get characterised as ‘bangers’. Roy is a talented middle-order batsman, capable of scoring runs quickly and with increasing consistency, but the attributes that set him apart in the middle-order of a first-class batting line-up are the bread and butter of a Twenty20 line-up — as such, he finds himself thrust to the top of the order.
What would have happened to Adam Gilchrist if he were a young batsman developing in the age of T20? It doesn’t take too much imagination to see a young Gilchrist told his was a specialist set of skills and Test cricket would’ve missed out on one of the most explosive talents it had ever seen; blade flashing, feet planted and back-lift up round his shoulders.
Let’s not take the comparison too far; Jason Roy is not Adam Gilchrist. Roy’s style is his own, all tippy-toes and short backlift, and he has a long way to travel to get near to Gilchrist’s ability to change a match in the space of ten overs. But, if Roy can keep the consistency, he has half a chance of getting half way there.
To quote Sangakkara’s congratulatory tweet following his 140 against Northants, “boy can bat.”
