Slow feet, quicksilver wrists – confident Lawrence is unlikely opener

‘Let the bowler have the first hour and then take the next five hours,” was the mantra of the great India batsman, Sunil Gavaskar, when explaining his intended construction of a day’s batting as an opener.
What Gavaskar was saying was that the initial forays of a Test innings were a time for survival, for watchfulness, for blunting the initial ferocity of the opposition quick bowlers, for seeing off the new ball (a typical team-meeting expression that I, even as a former blocker, used to detest, by the way, simply because it is so nebulous and clichéd), for setting one’s ego to one side and eschewing many of the strokes that could then allow you to score your runs in the five hours after that first one of circumspection.
On that theme last winter when England were in India, Gavaskar took great delight in playfully mocking Geoffrey Boycott by contrasting his approach with today’s Bazball openers, reckoning that Boycott gave the first five hours to the bowlers, whereas now England barely give them the first five minutes. This was all rather rich coming from a man who once crawled to 36 not out off 174 balls with just one four in a 60-over World Cup match against England at Lord’s, but the point is that they were both openers from a different age, and that England do approach things rather differently these days.
It was amusing listening to that lovable sage of Somerset, Vic Marks, on BBC’s Test Match Special as England began their first innings late on the first day of the third Test at Edgbaston against West Indies last month. Zak Crawley had just hit three boundaries in an over as England raced to 29 in the fourth over when Marks said with that most mischievous of chuckles of his: “Well, obviously England want to grind their way to the close without losing a wicket . . . or not.”
Mind you, that was nothing compared with the Ben Duckett-inspired record-breaking antics in the previous Test at Trent Bridge where 50 had been brought up in just 4.2 overs, and, though England did lose three quick wickets thereafter at Edgbaston, this is a way of saying that it really should come as little surprise that England have selected Dan Lawrence to open against Sri Lanka at Old Trafford this week.
Cast your eyes about, particularly around the recent England squads (because Hampshire folk and others will doubtless, with some justification, propose James Vince), for another right-hander most like the injured Crawley, all fearless aggression and hitting the ball on the up, and Lawrence is your man.
The advantages of a left-hand/right-hand combination can be overstated (Hobbs and Sutcliffe and Greenidge and Haynes were pretty useful as right-handed partnerships, as were Hayden and Langer and Cook and Strauss as left-handed alliances), but the contrasts in size, style and scoring areas between the left-handed Duckett and right-handed Crawley have definitely made opening bowlers uncomfortable.
Of course, there is the small problem that Lawrence is not a specialist opener, but then the small problem of Jamie Smith not ’keeping for Surrey and Shoaib Bashir not playing for Somerset have hardly proved insurmountable hurdles this summer.
And Lawrence has opened in first-class cricket before, indeed he has done so once this season for Surrey, albeit when promoted alongside Smith in pursuit of an improbable target of 209 in only 19 overs against Somerset, and has done so on six other occasions. He has done well, too, averaging 46.20 in the position.
Take a look at Cricket Archive, that wonderful statistical resource, and you will find that the first match recorded involving Lawrence was in 2010 when he opened for his beloved Chingford’s second team and made 58 not out against Hockerill.
The second team’s end-of-season report said: “Particular mention should be made of 13-year-old Daniel Lawrence who came into the side half way through the year. Opening the innings he cemented his place in the team scoring 254 runs at an average of 31.75 (including 89 against Wanstead and 73 against Fives). In addition Daniel was the leading run-scorer in senior cricket at the club for the year scoring 1395 runs at 35.77 including one hundred and ten fifties. It goes without saying that such performances evidence huge potential.”
Indeed they did. Lawrence then opened for the Essex age groups and on his Essex second-team debut too, and, in only his second first-class match, from No3 he made a magnificent 161 against Surrey to become only the third 17-year-old to score a century in the County Championship.
In junior cricket promising young batters should always be encouraged to bat as high as possible in the order, but as the years have passed, it has become more and more obvious that Lawrence’s more natural habitat is further down the card. Indeed when he joined Surrey this season he began the championship season at No6 behind Rory Burns, Dom Sibley, Ollie Pope, Smith and Ben Foakes in a line-up that, remarkably, now contains three Test-match wicketkeepers.
Burns and Sibley are, of course, Test-match openers too, but they are also now from a different age. Since the beginning of Bazball the first hour of an innings has taken on a dramatically new complexion. Thanks to Sky Sports’ Benedict Bermange we can see that the first 15 overs of every innings (which, admittedly, is probably an ambitious gauge of the first hour, given the modern tardiness of fielding sides) since the revolution have yielded 4.71 runs an over.
From January 1, 2020 until Bazball, with Burns and Sibley featuring heavily, that figure was only 2.65. The percentage of boundaries is now 10.6, compared with 4.8 in that previous period. These are clear indications. The only thing being given to bowlers in that first hour is some leather-pummelling grief. The average has also gone up from 26.83 to 38.62, so the positive policy is actually working too.
It is enough to make us old-fashioned specialist openers, who considered ourselves a breed apart, weep. A particular technique and temperament were once deemed essential to open. Not any more, or so it seems. Duckett, summoned initially to open for his country when not doing so for his county, has bucked the trend with his no-leaving policy.
Lawrence, like Duckett and Crawley, will merely be encouraged to do his usual thing, eschewing any historical norms. A lot of splinters have been collected warming the Bazball bench while waiting for this opportunity and it is unlikely to resemble Harry Brook’s brief elevation up to No3 during last year’s Ashes at Headingley, which lasted one innings before he was dragged back to calmer waters.
For Sri Lanka’s likely pace attack will comprise Kasun Rajitha’s accuracy, Lahiru Kumara’s distinctly inaccurate pace and the left-arm skiddy swing of Vishwa Fernando, who was seen in Yorkshire colours earlier this season. Pat Cummins, Josh Hazlewood and Mitchell Starc it is not.
So it may be that Lawrence’s rather unusual technique is not examined too thoroughly. The slightly slow nature of his footwork (reason enough to shelve an exaggerated trigger movement some years ago), with a front pad that barely moves and makes an enticing target for any fast bowler nipping the ball back sharply, and a tendency to throw his hands at the ball without much transfer of weight into the stroke may not be exposed.
It may be that instead his quicksilver wrists, whipping balls to leg with often contorted body movements, and unwavering self-belief are instead spoken about this week.
Lawrence will certainly hope so. He is 27 now, with 11 Tests behind him, none of them during the Bazball era. Whippersnappers like Jordan Cox are emerging. Lawrence’s championship form this year has been good, averaging 53.09 with two centuries, but in the Hundred and the Vitality T20 Blast he has averaged only 14.12 and 11.77 respectively, and he mainly opened in the Blast too.
Opening may not be his preferred route of return to the Test scene, but often the harsher road can be the most rewarding and illuminating.