Keaton Jennings' woes expose England's lack of top-order options

Trevor Bayliss prefers to give struggling players the benefit of the doubt but his most recent words on the topic would have alarmed Keaton Jennings.

“One of the things we’ve tried to do is give those guys a bit longer to show what they have got,” said the England coach. “It still hasn’t worked, to be honest.”

Jennings was retained for the Third Test against South Africa, which resumed here today, but the opener is on notice. If he fails in the second innings, there will be severe pressure on his place at the top of the order.

Bayliss also identified a worrying trend — batsmen who start their Test careers well, before declining rapidly. Before Bayliss was hired, Sam Robson made a century in only his second Test — against Sri Lanka in 2014 — but did not play again after that summer.

A year later, with Bayliss on board for the Ashes, Adam Lyth followed the same pattern: a hundred in his second game, against New Zealand, before five poor Ashes Tests halted his international career. Gary Ballance did better for longer, but failed to impress on either of his recalls.

Is Jennings going the same way? The Durham batsman started superbly, making 112 on his debut against India in Mumbai last December when chosen to replace the injured Haseeb Hameed. In the following Test, he made 54 in the second innings.

Since then, however, Jennings has managed 44 runs in three Tests, averaging 8.8. More worryingly, the 25-year-old appears to have no answer to the supreme skill of Vernon Philander, who has dismissed him three times in five innings.

Nobody in the ground was surprised when Philander, despite a stomach bug, drew Jennings forward in the fourth over and found the edge of his bat. Dean Elgar did the rest at third slip. Philander does not bowl quickly — sometimes his deliveries are clocked at less than 80mph — but he is perfect for the seam-friendly conditions that prevailed on Thursday.

Rather like Mohammad Asif, the disgraced Pakistan bowler, Philander is devilishly accurate and can move the ball through the air and off the pitch. Both Alastair Cook and Kevin Pietersen, who have nearly 20,000 Test runs between them, regard Asif as one of their most difficult opponents. With such skills, you don’t need to bowl at 90mph. Part of the problem for Jennings is that he pitched up at Lord’s for the first Test of the summer with little form or practice behind him. He scored a pair of half-centuries for the Lions against South Africa A in June, but in the Championship for Durham he has only one hundred and one fifty. It cannot have been easy, either, playing for a team who started the summer as they did.

The ECB relegated Durham to Division Two last season and handed them a 48-point penalty in return for the £3.8million bail-out that stopped the club going out of business in May 2016. Against such a backdrop it takes a strong personality to thrive. It would be only natural for Jennings to be affected by the atmosphere of despair.

England are absolutely desperate for Hameed to regain confidence in time for the Ashes. The Lancashire batsman, who is still only 20, looked the part in India last winter before he broke his hand in the Third Test.

This summer has been very difficult for him, so much so that his average of 19.5 in Division One is lower than that of Jimmy Anderson, who averages 23.

Yet in his last outing, Hameed scored 110 for Lancashire 2nd XI against the MCC Young Cricketers. Philander, Morne Morkel and Kagiso Rabada would provide a rather more difficult examination of an opening batsman than the MCC attack that day yet the innings was a shaft of light in a dark summer.

While Hameed works his way back, pressure will fall again on the selectors to give an opportunity to Mark Stoneman. Many had expected Stoneman, who left Durham for Surrey ahead of this summer, to be chosen for The Oval Tesst.

Although there remain doubts about his reliability outside off stump, there is surely merit in picking a man in form. Stoneman has made 761 Championship runs at 58.5 and having moved to Surrey partly to improve his England chances, he believes he is ready.

The spot remains Jennings’ to lose. If he fails in the second innings, though, England would have to think very carefully before keeping him for the Fourth Investec Test at Old Trafford — especially if they do not win this one.