Are we already watching peak Harry Brook?
6 minute read
Brooks aren’t ordinarily associated with peaks – they tend to run beneath them – but Harry Brook might already be at one. We’ll tell you what stops a brook in its tracks though: a dam – or perhaps in this case, the giving of damns.
You may or may not have been fully cognisant of our wincing when we reported that Jacob Bethell was being described as a ‘generational talent’ ahead of this tour. Young players shouldn’t have to put up with that kind of crap.
It’s instructive though to consider how far that sort of reputation might carry a player when allied to even half the output of Bethell’s team-mate, Harry Brook. At the time of writing, midway through his 23rd Test, the Yorkshireman has hit eight hundreds and is averaging 61.80.
If this England team decided to commit to a perceived ‘generational talent’ and he went on to average 30.9 after the same number of games, with four hundreds, he wouldn’t be in much danger of being dropped, would he?
Ollie Pope averages 34.59 after 54 Tests. Slightly different job, but Zak Crawley averages 31.14 after 52 Tests (and has still only hit four hundreds). Youthful promise and an air of ‘talent’ can together do a pretty good job of deflecting the selectorial axe.
None of which is our point. Our point is there’s a guy who is almost twice as good. Harry Brook is consistently gambolling to the crease and lashing hundreds at a Shahid-Afridi-esque strike rate. His slowest was scored at 72.48 runs per 100 balls, his quickest at 131.89. Even his triple hundred came at almost a run a ball.
Partly this is modern cricket, partly it is just how Brook plays. It’s also worth saying that, while it draws much mockery, it is also the environment. But at the same time, how easy is it to remain so productively carefree when people need you to score runs?
Brook is of course not actually carefree. It’s an illusion. And who knows what psychological chicanery he indulges in to persuade himself that he is. His consistency has been built on a method where preservation of his wicket is almost an afterthought – but as time wears on, wanting to stay in while simultaneously batting like you don’t care if you get out will become an increasingly difficult balancing act.
Brook’s walked that tightrope adeptly so far. But if there’s one thing you can count on, it’s that the sidewind of responsibility will pretty soon blow far stronger.
Peter’s Principality
We don’t know whether it’s a broader British thing, but English cricket is infatuated with responsibility. Players come into a Test team shaped by the Peter principle.
After his first two one-day international series, against Zimbawe and South Africa, Kevin Pietersen was averaging 139.50 and he’d scored at a run a ball. He’d been batting at five, he’d batted extraordinarily, but he barely ever batted in that position again.
The move up the order made sense because obviously here was a batter England wanted to make maximum use of. At the same time, he’d not been massively hampered by lack of exposure. He’d made three hundreds in those two series and a couple of fifties and if you saw any of these innings it was obvious the time constraints had in many ways brought out the very best of him. We’ve often thought something similar about Jos Buttler.
In moving a batter up the order, sometimes you shear them of a little of their essence. No-one ever seems to worry about this too much.
Those are maybe less relevant examples given they’re in a format where overs are finite, but the same buoyancy pulls on batters in the Test team too. Most obviously, Joe Root’s never too far from a suggestion he move up to number three. In fact the better be performs at four, the greater the pressure to move. The same forces apply to any middle-order batter who does well.
Returning to Buttler, England’s white ball captain serves as a salutary example of how lightning can become that much harder to bottle in the open-ended world of Test cricket. Harry Brook seems to us to have that at the minute. He is such a wonderful and perfect Test five, we don’t especially see any allure in changing anything. Moving him up to four might not in itself free the lightning, but bottles can only take so many knocks.
Because of course there’s also the small matter of…
Captaincy
This is the other brand of responsibility that looms large for Brook – not least because he’s already done the job. He was, admittedly, only England’s fifth captain of the summer when he led against Australia a few months ago, but odds are he’ll be doing it again and it’s easy to see how the greater exposure might erode his game.
“If you get caught somewhere on the boundary or in the field then who cares?” he responded after England had been criticised for their batting when losing his first match in charge.
While robust feedback to that comment didn’t prevent him from making his first ODI hundred in the next game, are we really in a place where we want to even accidentally persuade Harry Brook to think differently about the art of batting?
Those numbers again: eight Test hundreds and an average of 61.80.
Sadly, this kind of extra scrutiny almost inevitably awaits. If the likes of Alastair Cook and Joe Root can rise to the Test captaincy on the basis that they’re really good batters, a player who’s also shown some sort of aptitude for leadership will be doing very well to sidestep the job.
Why not move him up to three as well and just watch the magic fizzle out?
High five
There are players in the history of Test cricket who’ve managed to bat well at five – or even six – without being invited to “take more responsibility” up the order.
Quite a few of them have been Australian, which is probably Allan Border’s fault. He made half of his 11,000 Test runs when batting at five or six and saw out the last few years of his career down there. This paved the way for Steve Waugh to bat there in basically every single Australia Test until he finally decided to stop playing cricket.
Waugh made 10,479 runs at an average of 52.13 when batting at five or lower with 31 hundreds. AND THEY NEVER MOVED HIM.
Border and Waugh did of course take on more responsibility by serving as captains – as did Michael Clarke (6,788 runs at 59.02 when batting at five or six). But there have been players who’ve managed to stay at five without too many distractions.
Shivnarine Chanderpaul was captain for just 14 of his 164 Tests but was still permitted to make 9,635 of his 11,867 Test runs batting at five or lower.
The most relevant comparison is probably AB de Villiers. Here was a batter who could perform in any position, in any format; a man known for his shot-making who could nevertheless dig in with the best of them. At various times, South Africa asked him to open, captain and keep wicket, but they also never strayed too far, for too long in how they made use of their most talented batter.
De Villiers scored 6,307 of his 8,765 Test runs and 19 of his 22 hundreds when batting at five or six. It was always a muddy picture with de Villiers, but 12 of those hundreds came when unburdened by either wicketkeeping or captaincy.
Conclusion
Is this what England should do with Harry Brook? Simply ink him in at five and free him of all distractions?
It doesn’t really work like that. Life is forever in flux. Players change. Enthusiasm fades. Even senior statesman status might temper his approach.
All we’re saying is that it’s an option. You don’t have to move your best batter up the order when things are going well. You don’t have to make him captain.
Someone has to take responsibility, of course. Someone has to give a damn – just ideally not the guy whose superpower is playing like he doesn’t.
