Jonny Bairstow Quotes

Jonny Bairstow

Profession : Athlete

Birth : September 26, 1989

I've been through practices during which I've felt as though medieval torture would have been easier.

Jonny Bairstow

When I came into the England team I was always being asked whether I 'really' wanted to be a wicketkeeper. It was as though no one had noticed the work I'd already put in to make myself one.

Jonny Bairstow

In my head I'm talking all the time.

Jonny Bairstow

You know when you've hit a good shot. I use a bat that weighs two pounds and nine ounces, and it makes a reassuringly solid sound when I connect properly. The ball pings off the middle.

Jonny Bairstow

When my dad died, I was eight. Becky was seven. My mum had cancer, the first of two bouts that she's fought and beaten.

Jonny Bairstow

I've always tried to honour my dad and what he did for Yorkshire, which for him frequently meant putting the county's cause before his own. But my late boyhood, my early teens and my adolescence were full of net sessions and practice drills he never witnessed, ups and downs he never knew about and matches he never saw.

Jonny Bairstow

The place closest to my dad's heart, unequivocally his favourite, was Scarborough. To him it was the epitome of the English coast, postcard perfect.

Jonny Bairstow

Yorkshire knew how important Scarborough was for me. So I was awarded my county cap there in 2011. That first cap is one of the most precious things I own. The club didn't tell me that I'd be receiving it, but instead tipped off my mum, making sure she saw the presentation.

Jonny Bairstow

My dad is never far from my thoughts. A place, a game, an incident somewhere or an unexpected word from someone can trigger a memory, which then triggers another, and suddenly I'm thinking about him, if only for a minute or two.

Jonny Bairstow

I've learnt - and this pleases me - that my dad's cricketing life and my own will always be intertwined, even though I will finish far behind the number of appearances he made for Yorkshire and also his length of service at Headingley.

Jonny Bairstow

I was only ever briefly angry with my dad for leaving us. It happened shortly after his death, when things were at their darkest and the grief in me was raw and at its worst.

Jonny Bairstow

When I came into the Yorkshire academy I was christened Bluey almost immediately.

Jonny Bairstow

I look so much like my dad - same chin, same cheekbones, same forehead - and I play a little like him too. But I am my mother's son. I am who I am because of her.

Jonny Bairstow

My dad passed on his cricketing talent. My mum has enabled me to use it.

Jonny Bairstow

My mum thinks I get my determination and resilience from my dad. I think it comes mostly from her.

Jonny Bairstow

Everyone who survives cancer knows the victory against it may only be temporary. You know eventually that you might have to fight all over again. Almost 15 years after my mum's first bout of cancer, a second bout occurred. This time she needed an operation.

Jonny Bairstow

No one saw me cry over my dad's death for almost nine years. I hid what I felt, bottling up my emotions so tightly that almost nothing leaked out.

Jonny Bairstow

With my dad gone, I made a resolution to myself. I would become the man of the house. Adulthood was still more than a decade away for me.

Jonny Bairstow

My dad was an only child. His father raised him all but alone after his mother abandoned the two of them. He was only three years old.

Jonny Bairstow

Life without cricket was initially harder for my dad than playing the game for Yorkshire and England had ever been. He missed it, and also the adrenaline pump of a performance.

Jonny Bairstow