Rory Burns defies Ashes ‘inquisitors’ to grind out maiden ton

Rory Burns celebrates after reaching his maiden Test century at Edgbaston yesterday. Picture: Getty.

Nathan Lyon had the look of a deranged inquisitor as he ran into bowl his wicked off-spinners, each dipping, twisting delivery seeking the truth from Rory Burns.

Burns was in the nineties for 54 minutes. He faced ten balls on 99 before nudging Lyons to wide mid-off for the single that sealed his maiden  Test ton.

Even then James Pattinson rifled the ball to Lyon to whip off the bails and invite TV interrogation of his run for home.

Burns was in by a mile and pretty soon in the arms of Ben Stokes.

It might mean nowt come the end of this series. On this day it meant a great deal for Burns and his team, the glue binding the grinding reply to within 17 of Australia’s first-innings total of 284, for the loss of only four wickets.

It might have been different had Australia reviewed the lbw shout given not out against Burns, who would have gone for 21.

They didn’t and England progressed at a run rate from the 1970s, the full 2.something an over. Geoffrey Boycott was purring with nostalgia overload on Test Match Special while insisting any decent batsmen would have knocked off a ton with a stick of  rhubarb.

Burns prospered in the manner of the ancients, an innings coated in sepia. It was assiduous, attentive accumulation, eschewing the big gesture, saying no to the flourish.

Having made his Test debut in Sri Lanka last year without distinction, Burns’s place was far from secure after failing twice against Ireland at Lord’s, with scores of six in each innings.

Burns is proof of the good that can come if you persist with a player based on sound evidence. Five successive seasons of 1,000 runs or more in the service of Surrey suggested an opener who might be worth a crack.

Until he crossed the nineties threshold he looked largely untroubled, and this despite the change, at 60 overs, to a ball that swung all over the place.

Burns faced the first ball of the day and the last showing the full face of a bat, unbeaten on 125. At the other end stood Stokes, who played fluently for his undefeated 38.

There is a lesson here for Burns’ opening partner Jason Roy, poor lad. All that practice, all that inner urging not to chase the ball lasted all of two deliveries, the time it took for Roy to get after an inviting delivery from Pattinson at the start of play.

We are talking fractions here, the nano-seconds that determine outcomes. Roy gave it the full English, not quite at the pitch, the bat already committed to the stroke. Connection was made, the ball flying off the edge through second and third slip. Roy’s heart rate would have blown a monitor  at this point. He got away  with it, if not to any great end.

There is a vast parade of past England greats talking themselves dizzy about the technical shortcomings that lead the ball to find the edge and not the middle.

For those baffled by the idea of an international cricketer ascending to the highest stage with a technical flaw, join the club. It seems to this observer the issue is not one of technique necessarily but one of judgement, of attitude.

Roy has simply not spent enough time observing the behaviour of red balls out in the middle. His lines and lengths are attuned to white-ball rhythms. It is thus a question of time.

At this juncture, Roy’s head is full of doubt. Instinct is clouded by premeditated concerns, the voices of Boycott, Nasser Hussain and Michael Vaughan chirping away at his shoulder. Let the ball come on to the bat, let the hands work closer to the body. After 10,000 hours of Test match toil, the hands would gravitate towards the right spot.

After only ten minutes it is harder to groove the twitch muscles, and so Roy hovers in the nether world between the white and red-ball  universes.

If you are thinking about where your hands should be, one thing is certain, they are never going to be in the right position.

Patience is the answer. Sadly that is a rare commodity in professional sport. Pattinson delivered a high-quality ball that forced Roy to play. Had he been a little less tense, softer hands might have lessened the impact persuading the ball to fall short of Steve Smith’s hands at slip.

Not this day. Roy was gone for ten with the chorus of doom filling his head from within and without.