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3 hours ago
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Emilio Gay lived three lives on Friday. The first ended in the 14th over, when he was on 20 and he leaned forward towards a ball from Matt Henry that zipped off the pitch, caught the edge of his bat and spat through the gap between first and second slip. The second finished in the 16th, when he had 24 and he played and missed another of Henry’s deliveries that jagged back and whacked into his front pad. The umpire gave him the benefit of the doubt, and New Zealand chose not to review it, a decision they were left regretting when moments later the TV replays showed they had been just as wrong as he had.
The third, and last, came later in the afternoon session, when Gay had reached 57, the highest score anyone had yet made in a match where batting has been almost insuperably difficult. He reached for a ball from Nathan Smith that held its line and edged a fine catch behind to Tom Blundell. This time Gay had to go. He rolled his head back in regret and stared at the sky a while, no doubt asking why he had allowed himself to be suckered into playing a delivery which would have passed harmlessly by wide of off-stump, then turned and made the slow walk back towards the Long Room doors.
Well, give me lucky generals. No one was able to bat any length of time on this Lord’s pitch without the help of good fortune and bad fielding. Among Gay’s batting partners, Ben Duckett was dropped by Rachin Ravindra at mid-wicket, and Jacob Bethell was dropped at backward point by Devon Conway before surviving a review of a marginal lbw and finally being cleaned up by a ball that grubbed along the pitch without rising knee high. In the circumstances, the most impressive thing about the way Gay played was that whatever twists and turns his fortunes took, his manner didn’t change much from one moment to the next.
Gay looks good at the non-striker’s end. I suppose everyone did on this pitch since it was much the best place to do your batting. But he has a way of leaning himself on his bat, one leg cocked, hand on hip, that makes him seem like a man who has stopped by a stile to admire the view. He has a handsome square drive, although judging by how much he played and missed he’s maybe a little too keen to use it, and a swishy flick that goes through the on-side that goes like warm butter over a crumpet. Really, though, this innings wasn’t a test of his technique but his temperament, the way he handles himself when the odds are against him, the shots he plays after the ones he got wrong.
By that measure, it went well. He was quick enough to drop his bat on the balls that kept low, sensible enough to block the ones that came straight, and smart enough to duck under all the short ones Will O’Rourke bowled to him during a hostile spell from the Pavilion End and didn’t rise, either, when O’Rourke followed through behind them to tell him exactly what he thought of his batting.
By the time he was done, Gay had become the first English opener to make a 50 in his first Test in this country since Andrew Strauss, way back in 2004, and the first to do it anywhere since Keaton Jennings scored a century against India at the Wankhede in 2016. Jennings was only given another 16 Tests despite it, which feels a timely reminder, if anyone needed it, of just how hard a job it is opening the batting.
Zak Crawley and Duckett had a good run at it, but England have had all sorts of openers in the years immediately before them. Gay is the 20th man to do the job in the past decade. There have been short ones and tall ones, stoic ones, strokeless ones, skittish ones, and sporty ones, some who got the job for a sole innings, some who had it for a solitary series, others who lasted a single summer. There was a subcontinental specialist, and another couple who got the job because of how well they did it in white ball cricket, and a couple more who took it on because it was the only way to fit them into the batting order.
You could already feel the opposition’s analysts unpicking Gay’s technique in super slow motion. There are tics there for them to work with. Gay waits for the ball on his heels, like a man who has paused halfway into his favourite chair, then makes a short step towards the ball at the last moment, as if he’s just remembered to fetch the paper he left folded on the table.
No doubt the opposition’s analysts are already working on a way to take advantage. It’s a little early to get too effusive about their latest, after all this time it feels a bit like being introduced to your friend’s fifth wife, but there was just enough there to suggest that he really could be the one they’ve been looking for, this summer at least.
