Just a single, just like all the others. A totally ordinary delivery on the stumps met with a totally ordinary push into the gap between mid-wicket and mid-on. It’s a shot he will have played thousands of times before in his life, and it was worth just one run, and it was worth everything. The 8,628th run Rory Burns scored in first-class cricket was the one he will treasure most of all.
But we’re getting ahead of ourselves.
Let’s rewind a few minutes, to when Burns was on 99. The sweat gathering in the front of his helmet on a warm summer’s evening. The Australian fielders closing in like a fist. The game still tantalisingly poised, and Burns poised too: on the cusp of a moment that, one way or the other, was going to define him.
Any discussion of the greatest England men’s opening batsmen of the last 30 years would have to include Michael Atherton, Alec Stewart, Marcus Trescothick and Alastair Cook. Between them they played almost 500 Tests, scored almost 35,000 runs and scored 78 centuries. But none of them came in a home Ashes Test. They had 119 attempts, and here’s this young scamp from Surrey, on the verge of cracking it on his very first go.
Perhaps, in a way, it proves that milestones are an overrated phenomenon: all four are nonetheless remembered as England greats. But they did not savour the single greatest individual high an English batsman can experience: raising the bat and lifting the lid to celebrate a century against the oldest and toughest enemy, soaking up the acclaim of a home crowd.
This is the delirious fate that awaits Burns in just a few moments, although he doesn’t know it yet. How do you begin to handle a prospect like that? How do you even bring yourself to hold a bat straight? But Burns does. He waits patiently, as he has done all day. He plays out an entire maiden over from Lyon. In between balls, he follows the same routine: a short stroll out to square leg, a little touch of the helmet, a few medium-sized breaths, trying to ignore the crescendo of noise building in the stands around him. Anybody who tells you cricket is a game of numbers and not moments has never been not out on 99 in their first ever Ashes Test.
But we’re getting ahead of ourselves.
Burns is on 92. Burns has been on 92 for a while. In the time Burns has been on 92, you would probably have had time to pop down to the supermarket, do your shopping, return home, put it all away, realise you already had half a tub of Greek yoghurt in the back of the cupboard, and still have a good few minutes to Google ‘what to do with too much Greek yoghurt’.
In the time Burns has been on 92, he has seen Australia successfully persuade the umpires to change the old ball, bowl six overs with the new one, dismiss Joe Denly and Jos Buttler and completely change the complexion of the game. England have gone from 185-2 to 194-4. Meanwhile, Burns himself seems to have suddenly forgotten how he scored any of his runs to that point. Pat Cummins - indifferent thus far - beats him on the inside edge, and then the outside edge for good measure. James Pattinson - superb all day - tempts him licentiously outside off-stump. A ragged day for Australia, particularly in the field, is beginning to swing decisively their way.
We think we know how this ends. Burns got bogged down in similar fashion in the Caribbean, when he made 84 before getting out and precipitating a calamitous collapse to the off-spin of Roston Chase. This England side always have a collapse in them, and despite a strong start to the day, there are now no guarantees they will even get a first innings lead. Australia are making the new-old ball move around corners, and while the gags will surely flow, so too will the procession of England batsmen in and out of the dressing room.
But we’re getting ahead of ourselves.
It’s the week before the Edgbaston Test, and Rory Burns is in the Oval nets. Hitting balls. Working things out. The previous week, he had been out for 6 and 6 against the county-level bowlers of Ireland at Lord’s. A Test average of just 22, a poor run of scores at domestic level, an out-of-kilter technique and the world’s best and most searching pace attack bowling with 2018 Dukes balls in seam-friendly conditions seemed like a cruel and unusual punishment in the making.
After the Ireland game, Sky Sports asked their pundits to pick their starting XIs for the first Ashes Test at Edgbaston, and none of them picked Burns. He knew he had a little time, but not very much more than that. Opening the batting, especially at Test level, and especially in England, brings many more failures than successes. Burns needed a success, and soon, otherwise he too would surely become another English opener who bit the dust.
And so he applied himself in the only way he knows how. With Alec Stewart feeding balls, and academy coach Neil Stewart - the man who Burns credits as one of the biggest influences on his career - standing in the wings, Burns put in the hard hours working on the kinks in his game. Trying to get the alignment right. Trying to get his head over the off-stump. Trying to get his hands closer to his body and his footwork sharper.
The previous week, we had met to discuss the forthcoming summer. And when talking about his own indifferent run of form, he struck upon a sentence whose power only really feels apparent now. “You’re only ever half an hour from kicking yourself back into rhythm,” he says, and how right he was.
---
He hasn’t cracked it yet, of course. Dawid Malan hadn’t cracked it when he scored his century at Perth, and nor had Rob Key when he scored his 221 against the West Indies, and nor had Nick Compton when he scored his twin centuries in New Zealand. But against a world-class attack, in helpful bowling conditions, on the very biggest of stages, Burns showed he belongs for now. He’s on the board. He’s in the game. He’s a Test centurion.
Perhaps Burns can kick on in the morning and make a really big one: you know, one of those scores that rolls off the tongue, where you don’t even need the name to know who made it: a 158, or a 207, or a 333. Perhaps his century will help set up an England victory. Perhaps Burns really will be the long-term solution at the top of the order. Perhaps, in years to come, when he’s got many more centuries and Ashes innings to his name, he’ll look back on that quick single to mid-on as the run that started it all. But once more, we’re probably getting ahead of ourselves.
