Sonstiges » e was doing.It was the attempt to play

Englands warm-up matches in St Kitts at the start of the 2015 Caribbean tour were, in many ways, lacklustre affairs.So modest were the opposition (they were bowled out for 59 in the first innings of the first two-day game) that the teams were rearranged with England players loaned to the hosts to provide a sterner test. The only points of interest seemed to be Jonathan Trotts emergence as Alastair Cooks new opening partner, and the news from London that Paul Downton had been sacked as managing director of the England teams.In retrospect, the second game also provided a first glimpse of something that was to prove more significant. Jonny Bairstow, who had not made the England side for the first game, came in at No. 4 for the St Kitts Invitational XI side in the second match and, using the unusually high backlift that has now become his hallmark, made a fluent 98 against an attack that included Stuart Broad, James Anderson and Ben Stokes.He timed the ball beautifully, Paul Farbrace, the England assistant coach, recalls. He looked a million dollars.Farbrace half-expected the improvement. He had spoken to Martyn Moxon, the Yorkshire director of cricket, just ahead of the tour and Moxon had remarked on some technical alterations that appeared to be working well.Whatever you do, he said to me, keep an eye on where the bat is before the bowler delivers, Farbrace says now. He said, Please make sure it is above the stumps. He really stressed it: Please do it.The aim was to make the bat come down straight. Before that, his head had often been outside the ball and the bat tended to come down from the direction of gully. He was missing full-length deliveries. By standing taller, his balance was better and the bat was able to come through straighter.Before that, he was always searching for a method that worked for him. But now the search was over.He is much more comfortable with his game and he has just gone from strength to strength. It sounds like a minor change but the results have been massive.They sure have. Having averaged 42.99 in first-class cricket up until the end of the 2014 English season, with 11 centuries, Bairstow has averaged 64.81 since then, with 11 centuries. Furthermore, he goes into the Chennai Test - Englands final Test of a busy year - having already set a new record for the most Test runs in a calendar year by a wicketkeeper and requiring 61 more to equal Michael Vaughans England record of 1481 Test runs in a year (set in 2002).Only seven men (Mohammad Yousuf, Viv Richards, Graeme Smith, Michael Clarke, Sachin Tendulkar, Sunil Gavaskar and Ricky Ponting, who did it twice) have reached 1500 Test runs in a year. For a specialist batsman, that is a fine record. For a wicketkeeper, it is exceptional. Nobody has scored more Test runs this year.Martyn deserves all the credit for that, Farbrace says. He has known him his whole life, really. He played with his dad and he had seen him grow up. Whatever has happened, he has been there to pick up the pieces and encourage him. The support and consistency they have shown to Jonny at Yorkshire has been outstanding and England are now reaping the benefits.Moxon sees it a little differently. He recalls the technical change as Bairstows own idea and part of a package of improvements that saw him graduate from promising to consistent over the course of a few weeks.It wasnt me who suggested the backlift, Moxon says. He worked that out for himself. We helped him drill it and reinforce it, but he had a period of self-reflection where he tried things and saw what worked and what didnt. He now trusts his method and no longer feels there is any need of chopping and changing it.My work was more about helping him control his emotions. He has always enjoyed being in the heat of battle, but there were times when his arousal levels took him past the line of control and meant he was going hard at the ball. I had to remind him to respect each delivery and prevent him from becoming complacent. I worked with him on making sure the point of contact was in front of the eyes and keeping him under control of what he was doing.It was the attempt to play the ball closer to his eyes that convinced Bairstow to start tinkering with his technique. The 2014 season was over, and having not won a recall to the Test team since an ill-fated return in the last couple of Ashes Tests, he was searching for solutions.I was just messing about on the bowling machine in the nets at Headingley, Bairstow says now. I felt I was playing the ball too far in front of myself and that was leaving some flaws.I wanted to slow the bat-path down, make myself play later and in front of my eyes rather than getting in front of myself. The objective was to play the ball later by making the bat travel further.He also believes that his balance changed for the better.If you look at pictures of me batting at Lords in 2012, I was low, my knees were bent, my head was across and my elbow was pointing to mid-off, he says. Im really crouched. It looks completely unnatural to me. Thats why I was falling over and missing the full, straight ones sometimes. I try not to overthink b