Jonny Bairstow interview: ‘People said I’d never be as good as my dad’

This week in the foothills of the Himalayas, Jonny Bairstow will scale his own cricketing Everest by becoming the 17th Englishman to win his 100th Test cap.

For the England captain, Ben Stokes, reaching 100 Tests in Rajkot last month was “just another game”. But for Bairstow, the weight of the milestone is illustrated by the size of the entourage: travelling to India’s north are his mother Janet and sister Becky, his partner Megan and their nine-month-old son, plus a coterie of friends from school and beyond.

Their journey up a winding, often hazardous road to Dharamsala feels an apt emblem for Bairstow’s action-packed, fluctuating career. Towards the end of his sit-down with Telegraph Sport, he smiles reflectively: “If it wasn’t for me, you guys wouldn’t have half as much to write about!” There is no argument about that.

It was, by strange quirk, in Dharamsala five months ago that he brought up 100 caps in one-day international cricket, too. Looking out as the rain thrashes down, he seems right at home, joking that “it’s just like Leeds”. But until October, he had never been here. He was meant to come in 2013 for an ODI, but was at home with Janet as she received treatment for breast cancer for the second time.

Janet beat the cancer, just as she had 15 years earlier, but her illness offers a reminder of the adversity Bairstow has had to fight to reach this point, on and off the field. Janet was battling cancer for the first time when, in January 1998, the family returned from school to discover that her husband, David, had taken his own life at 46. David had three children: Jonny, Becky, and their half-brother Andrew, who is now 48 and played first-class cricket for Derbyshire in 1995.

As another combative, flame-haired Yorkshire and England wicketkeeper-batsman, the links between David and Jonny are obvious.

But it is of Janet that Jonny will be thinking most this week and, listening to him talk, it is little surprise that so many people have flooded here to support him, given it takes a village to overcome the challenges the Bairstows have. Even beyond family, he reels off names of those who have supported him, from those who picked him for Leeds and District U11s, to Yorkshire’s Ian Dews and Martyn Moxon, his coaches at school David Kirby and Mike Johnson, and family friend Sir Geoffrey Boycott.

“When I play, there are times I think about Dad,” he says. “But I think more about how hard Mum worked to make sure we were OK after everything that happened. To keep us together as a family. That has been my driving force.

“I think also about my grandpa, my mum’s dad; he took me to so much cricket as a kid. Grandma and Grandpa really helped when Dad passed. It all comes into one, you are playing for that group. For everyone who helped Mum so much when everything happened.

“My mum is the embodiment of strength. There was a determination there. She worked three jobs and had two kids that were under 10 at a difficult time. She was taking me to Leeds United [where he played youth football], to Headingley, all sorts of other places. It’s paying all that back, making sure they are OK, creating a life for my own family as well.

“She had cancer twice. She’s a bloody strong woman, to get through that twice, before you even consider anything else she’s been through, and it shows the strength and determination of the woman.

“She and Becky have been all over the world supporting me, but this will be their first time in India. Their support has been amazing. You do need to go home and have a life, rather than living and breathing every moment. Professional sport doesn’t just affect you when you do well or badly, it affects the whole family. That’s the same for every player. They might walk down the street and hear something, or see something pop up on their phone. They have lived and breathed it all with me, and I am so proud to share this week with them.”

‘I hope my dad is up there with a beer, looking down proudly’

As a child, Bairstow’s name preceded him. He has not watched “too much” footage of David playing. He can recall one clip, though, of him keeping wicket on the boundary in Australia in 1979, the incident that prompted the introduction of fielding restrictions in ODI cricket.

“Dad was Test cap 481, I’m 652,” he says. “It was always going to be tricky playing professional cricket with him playing for Yorkshire for 20-odd years previously. There were always going to be comparisons, and it did add to the challenge.

“People said I’d never be as good as my dad, that I’d never do this or that. There were comparisons around looks, stature, hair colour, keeping, batting, our mannerisms. It’s always been there.

“It’s a massive compliment, but I always wanted to do it my own way too. Dad played nearly 1,000 games for Yorkshire, had more than 1,500 dismissals as a wicketkeeper. They are ridiculous numbers.”

Bairstow pauses thinking about his father this week, saying: “I hope he’s sitting up there, having a beer, looking down proudly, and enjoying the week.”

Last May, shortly before Bairstow – who is fiercely protective of his family life – returned from the devastating fracture and dislocation of his ankle, Megan gave birth to their first child.

“I love that the family name continues,” he says, a little wistfully. “I am loving fatherhood, and the experiences we are sharing, and will hopefully continue to share. It’s the pictures we’ll be able to show him. They will be out here this week, and hopefully we will get some nice ones. I have some with Dad in Barbados, another at Lord’s. They are pretty cool to look back on.”

‘They didn’t tell me my injury could have been career-ending’

It is Megan and his family who he credits with helping him through what he considers the “greatest challenge” on the road to 100 Tests: that broken leg, suffered in the most innocuous circumstances at Pannal Golf Club near Harrogate in September 2022. It denied him a shot at the T20 World Cup and abruptly ended his second Test annus mirabilis (the first being 2016), when he scored six hundreds.

“I think making it back from the injury is number one,” he says. “For the surgeon to say how bad it was after I’ve made it back, that hit me a lot harder than I expected it to.

“They told me at the time that it was bad, but they didn’t tell me that they knew it should have been career-ending. Thankfully they didn’t hold me back, because I was always pushing to return, it meant so much to me.

“To get back from that, to get through six Test matches keeping wicket and batting as I did [last summer], just a few months after that injury. I know people will talk about how I performed, they can do that. But I was so proud to do that. I didn’t know if I was going to make it back.

“There were some dark days that winter. That whole journey was horrible, but Megan was amazing. To have been playing so well, to do something playing golf, walking down a bank, so innocently. To get injured so badly that it puts you out for that long. I questioned myself a lot at that time. I wondered what I had done to deserve it.”

He has, he adds, been back to Pannal once. “I walked straight past that spot and down a slightly less steep bank,” he says. “I needed to get over my demons before I can get closer.”

‘I have been prepared to do any job asked of me’

It is the “testing moments” that make Bairstow most proud of his journey.

“I am even more proud of the journey because it’s not been simple,” he says. “I have kept coming back. I’ve been prepared to do any job asked of me. I have always said it’s not about the number of times you get put down, it’s the number of times you are willing to go back to the well. I’ve had the resilience and the desire to keep playing, which shows how special it is to play Test cricket for England.

“I couldn’t choose to give this up myself, I don’t think. That is why I have kept coming back. To me it’s the pinnacle of the game and means so much to me. I remember being a kid watching on Channel 4, watching the highlights show after school. I didn’t grow up watching one-day cricket, I grew up watching Test cricket. It was everything to me. I loved [Michael] Vaughan, [Marcus] Trescothick, KP [Kevin Pietersen]. I remember going to Headingley, watching England do an indoor net session. They were in the Vodafone blue tracksuits, and I was in awe of it. It inspired me and I was desperate to be a part of it.

“To now become part of an amazing group of players who have played 100 Tests for England is very exciting. So many of that list are heroes of mine. You want to leave the game in a better place for the next person who comes through, and provide memories for fans.

“It’s going to be an emotional week. I want to enjoy the occasion, and try to put on a show with the lads for the amazing fans that follow us around the world.”

As one of England’s greatest ball-strikers and as an all-rounder who never shied away from a new task, Bairstow has certainly done that, whether through his 12 blistering Test hundreds or his smiley disposition with fans. Through resilience and no little skill, he has built a cross-format CV that few Englishmen can compete with. Only seven men have more runs in all formats for England, and he is approaching 6,000 Test runs.

Sitting on 70 T20Is, he also has a chance to scale another peak by becoming the first England player to appear in 100 internationals in each format. If he does, Dharamsala is surely the only venue to host it.