England cut is harsh on Ben Foakes but Jonny Bairstow offers pre-Ashes clarity

Surrey didn’t hang about. Just 10 minutes after the England squad was announced, confirming Jonny Bairstow’s return behind the stumps for Ireland and thus the start of the Ashes summer, and with Ben Foakes missing from the list of 15 players, the club’s Twitter feed fired up in solidarity with the fall guy.

“The best keeper in the world was at it again last week,” read the pointed post, accompanied by a lightning emoji and a video of his silken glove work during the win against Middlesex. Alec Stewart gave Foakes that title a couple of years back and Ben Stokes, a Test captain not prone to hyperbole, has repeated it a good few times since.

But in the end, with Bairstow fit again and keeping for Yorkshire following that gruesome leg break, and his stand-in, Harry Brook, having scorched his way through the Test winter in truly eye-catching fashion, the panel had to find a way to accommodate the player who didn’t so much start the so-called Bazball revolution as blast it into orbit.

They could have delayed the call, putting both men in the squad to face Ireland at Lord’s from 1 June. But while it has angered a good few supporters, tapping into that longstanding English debate about keepers and keeper-batters, Stokes, Rob Key, Brendon McCullum and co cannot be accused of dithering. Naming Dan Lawrence as the spare batter also means clarity for all concerned.

It is a pretty cruel blow for Foakes, although not as cruel as the news that Jofra Archer will be out for the rest of the summer after that expert-confounding elbow stress fracture recurred. This was the biggest gut punch in the press release and where the two parties go from here, central contracts and all, is far from straightforward.

But Foakes does have grounds to