Hot to Trott

I was at the Oval last summer when Jonathan Trott played his first innings. As he emerged from the pavilion, wearing a pair of wide, discoloured pads that looked as though he’d just fished them out of the team kitbag, the reaction of those around me was as if he had won a competition to bat for England in a test match. Many, I suspect, would have favoured the media campaign to restore Mark Ramprakash or even Marcus Trescothick to the side – when I explained to my neighbour that Trott was averaging over eighty in first class cricket that season he looked at me incredulously and went on to greet the shot with which he got off the mark with patronising applause that suggested that this couldn’t possibly last for long.

Of course, we now know what happened next. Trott’s assured maiden innings, full of trademark clips to leg and drives through the offside, was brought to a premature end by a remarkable piece of fielding by Simon Katich, but he made up for it with a match winning hundred in the second innings while his mother bawled in the stands.

A torrid tour to the land of his upbringing followed, commentators and opponents fixating on his between ball idiosyncrasies, and his place was under pressure at the start of the summer, but with three hundreds in seven tests since then and an average of just under sixty he is here to stay. His arrival has also had the happy by-product of enabling Ian Bell to drop back down to his favoured position of number six, a move which is greatly to the benefit of England.

I’ve seen him bat in the flesh twice since that auspicious start. On the first occasion he made 226 against Bangladesh and on the second he made 184 in the astonishing eighth wicket stand of 332 with Stuart Broad. Looking back at both innings they were characterised by secure footwork, lovely timing and a strong sense that he knew his game inside out. On the second morning at Lord’s, with all of the other batsmen discomfited by the moving ball, he looked utterly untroubled, calmly knocking the ball into his favourite scoring areas and leaving anything that looked remotely threatening.

He also now has the habit of delivering sizeable scores – on the occasions that he has passed seventy in tests he averages 221.33, which is remarkable. Three of his four test hundreds have resulted in England wins, while the fourth was part of a score of 517-1 that came after England were over two hundred behind on first innings. He has the happy knack of scoring runs when they matter, not simply when they are available, which is immeasurably important to England’s cause.

The elephant in the room, of course, is his nationality. Born and raised in South Africa, with an English cricket coach for a father, his selection for England has raised hackles in many quarters. Such gripes are irrelevant, however, for the eligibility rules are the same for all countries and have been exploited by pretty much everyone at some point or another. As with Kevin Pietersen, we should also consider the importance that county cricket has played in his development, particularly in his ability to play the moving ball. The only two questions that any selector should ask are ‘is he eligible?’ and ‘is he good enough?’. Luckily for England, the answer to both these questions is yes.