BAIRSTOW’S BLITZ LAUNCHES ‘BAZBALL’
Record run chase remembered
When tourists come to Trent Bridge, we trawl through our records, plunder the stock of memorabilia and rummage around in the statistics to find stories for our collective past.
No need to do that in 2026 for the visit of New Zealand – just hop back four years to the day that ‘Bazball’ became a reality and Test cricket proved that it could thrill and excite as much as any short form of the game.
No-one who was there on the final day will need any prompting to recall the record-breaking run chase, epitomised by the pyrotechnics of Jonny Bairstow’s 77-ball hundred.
With 9 fours and 5 sixes, he came within one ball of making the fastest-ever Test Match century for England as he and Ben Stokes (enjoying just his second Test as skipper) added 179 for the fifth wicket.
Stokes actually out-scored Bairstow in the first fifty of their partnership (25 to 24) but thereafter it was the Bairstow show.
He moved to his half-century off 51 balls and crashed boundaries galore moving from 50 to 100 in just 26 deliveries!
And he hadn’t finished there. He was fifth out, caught by Tom Blundell off Trent Boult for 136 from 92 balls with 14 fours and 7 sixes. He and Stokes moved through the gears together; their first fifty took 54 balls, the second an astonishing 19 deliveries and the third a further 37.
Bairstow’s was the outstanding performance in a match that had four other century-makers – Daryl Mitchell and Blundell in New Zealand’s first innings and Joe Root and Ollie Pope in England’s first knock.
As The Guardian reported it was: “… a match that produced some historic milestones along the way. England surpassed the 284 chased down against New Zealand in 2004, the previous highest at Trent Bridge, and when Stokes flayed Boult to the rope at the end it was the 250th boundary of the contest – a record for a five-day Test, any time, any place.”
The historic win was watched by a vocal, joyful crowd – a full house at Trent Bridge after a generous, but pragmatic, offer from Nottinghamshire CCC of free entry.
The gesture paid off in terms of the cricket but with a packed ground, the Club’s hospitality meant that bar and shop takings more than compensated for any refunded ticket revenue.
Remarkably, the passage of time has had more effect on the winning team. Of the England XI back in June 2022, only Stokes, Joe Root and Matthew Potts are in the current Test squad, whereas seven of the defeated Kiwis are likely to be back on duty at Trent Bridge this June.
Jonny Bairstow did it again a month later, against India at Edgbaston, scoring 106 and 114no as England won by seven wickets. He shared an unbroken stand of 269 with Joe Root; for his exploits in the India Test he was awarded the Wisden Trophy for the Outstanding Test Performance of 2022.
June 2026