The question hung around for years, jumped from one season to the next and never produced a confident answer. Jonny Bairstow, Jos Buttler or Ben Foakes: who should keep wicket for England’s Test team?
That debate has lost relevance. When Jamie Smith went on paternity leave for the tour of New Zealand at the end of last year, Essex’s Jordan Cox was his replacement. When Cox fractured his thumb before the series, Durham’s Ollie Robinson was next on the call sheet, though Ollie Pope ended up with the gloves for all three Tests. A younger crowd has moved in to take the space, Foakes and Bairstow having been left out after last year’s tour of India.
“It’s quite clear that they’re moving on,” Foakes says. “All throughout my career I’ve had the England thing – even if I’m picked or not, I’ve had that as my main focus and drive. Those shitty days that you don’t want to be in the gym or whatever it might be, that’s your thing that keeps you going.
“When I got dropped this time it felt like them moving on from the me, Jos, Jonny sort of thing. That felt like the end so that’s a difficult position mentally to be in, in terms of what is your next step to keep you trying to perform.”
Foakes’s career has been intertwined with Buttler and Bairstow, but has also taken a different shape. The other two are white-ball kings who were trying to make it work across all three forms, glovework not as vital as their batting. Foakes provides fewer pyrotechnics in the middle, but is the finest keeper of the three, finding love from the aesthetes if not the selectors.
Named player of the series against Sri Lanka in late 2018 – he hit an innings-rescuing century on debut in the first Test – Foakes was discarded after two matches in the Caribbean a couple of months later. He got a consistent run in 2022 and impressed after Brendon McCullum and Ben Stokes took charge, playing responsible parent at No 7 to the amped-up kids before him. The reward was a ton against South Africa at Old Trafford.
But he was dropped for the following year’s Ashes, the returning Bairstow taking his spot after Harry Brook had become undroppable. Foakes’s lightning hands were required up to the stumps on Indian turners at the start of 2024, but England moved on to Smith. The current, and possibly final, balance is 25 Tests, with a batting average of 29.2 requiring dissection. Only six of those matches were at home, where he averaged 40, and he was never granted the opportunity to bat above seven.
“My career’s never been smooth,” Foakes says. “It’s almost like if I’ve done badly, I’ve been picked or dropped. If I’ve done well, I’ve been picked or dropped. I don’t think I ever felt like I was a go-to guy they were going to give a run, so that in a way made it easier because I knew at some stage – or at any stage – it was happening. Every tour I got picked on, I wasn’t expecting it. It was more of a blessing than expectancy.
“Last summer was probably when I thought I might get a run. But that sums up my England career. When I thought I might, I didn’t. When I thought I wouldn’t, I did. Mentally, I knew at any stage it could happen and I accepted that.”
He sensed the drop last year when he was not withdrawn by England from a County Championship fixture for Surrey. “A little while before, we were told anyone that was going to play in the Test summer was going to be pulled out from that game,” says Foakes. “And Gus [Atkinson] and Popey [Ollie Pope] got pulled out, and I wasn’t. I knew before I got called. Baz called me, just a little 10-second chat, explained I was dropped and then that was it.” What was the explanation? “They wanted someone that packed more punch down the order.”
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Smith has provided that power and also leaned on his experienced Surrey colleague for advice, with Foakes still setting the bar in terms of keeping. While confirmation of the 32-year-old’s place in the queue came in New Zealand, there is some respite in knowing where he stands after all that time as an in-and-out player.
“Just the number of years I went through that, every summer just not knowing – it takes a toll on you mentally,” says Foakes. “It can stop you enjoying your cricket, just because there’s so much stress constantly involved in it.
“It would usually be every series, I’m getting stressed out about whether I’m getting picked or not. Or if someone got injured, do I need to practise? Whereas when they picked Jordan, and then Ollie, I was like: ‘Well that’s done.’ Obviously, not a nice feeling, but at the same time it was like: ‘I don’t have to worry about that any more or for the time being.’”
Foakes’s drive has subsequently shifted; if the Test career is over, “a new challenge” or “next step” is needed to keep him ticking. Winning championships at Surrey remains a motivation, but having been red-ball focused for so long – Foakes has played one Twenty20 match since 2020 – he has been working on his white-ball skills over the winter and wants to see where that takes him. “Whether it works out or not, at least I’ve got that challenge.”
There could be a return to the Blast this summer and he will definitely be involved in another championship fight as Surrey bid for four in a row. He will probably come up against Bairstow, who has a new job captaining Yorkshire’s red-ball side. Life rolls on even if the big show doesn’t call.