Jonny Bairstow in exalted company ahead of milestone match for Yorkshire skipper

Gary Ballance didn’t, and nor did Michael Vaughan, Martyn Moxon, Percy Holmes, Maurice Leyland, or any number of illustrious names from Yorkshire’s past.

Sir Geoffrey Boycott did (of course he did) – as did Sir Leonard Hutton, Herbert Sutcliffe, Darren Lehmann and Jacques Rudolph, to name just a handful of isolated cases.

But not many play a significant number of County Championship matches for the club – say at least 50 – and average over 50 with the bat.

Jonny Bairstow is one of them.

It is only right and proper – as he prepares for his 100th Championship game against Warwickshire at Headingley on Friday – to reflect on Bairstow’s proud contribution.

His average, for the record, stands at 50.58, and although Root (47.52) and Brook (39.52) may have something to say about membership to this exclusive club before their own careers are done, or even Lyth (39.83), given that the 37-year-old looks as if he could carry on forever, it puts Bairstow’s performances into perspective, both historically and in terms of his peers.

He made his debut back in 2009, top-scoring with an unbeaten 82 in the second innings of a game against Somerset at Headingley.

And although 99 Championship appearances in 16 years may not seem very much, it is actually quite a lot for someone who has risen to the heights at international level in this era of central contracts and fewer Championship fixtures, and amid the seemingly unstoppable explosion of white-ball cricket around the world.

Indeed, of the 17 Englishmen who have played 100 Tests, Bairstow has played more Championship matches than James Anderson (91), Stuart Broad (76), Kevin Pietersen (73), Ben Stokes (70) and Joe Root (57).

Root’s figure is the lowest on this list, one led by Boycott (369 Championship appearances), followed by Colin Cowdrey (367), Graham Gooch (353), Alec Stewart (252), David Gower (238), Ian Botham (233), Graham Thorpe (182), Ian Bell (151), Sir Alastair Cook (147), Michael Atherton (138) and Sir Andrew Strauss (114).

Statistics, of course, are all well and good, and to go back even further into the dim and distant, the famous all-rounders Wilfred Rhodes and George Hirst played 762 and 600 Championship matches for Yorkshire respectively, unthinkable figures nowadays.

But whereas the performances of many great players are measured by statistics, Bairstow’s have often seemed secondary – or even irrelevant – to the bigger picture.

In other words, their value has been so much more than simple numbers; rather, is the contributions at key stages of games that have been so important.

There were times, even in the glory years of the mid-2010s, when Bairstow held the Yorkshire batting together almost single-handed, enjoying purple spells of form along the way.

Whether through backs-to-the-wall belligerence, or blistering counter-attack, his impact on matches transcended his figures.

This is something only the very best can claim, something we have seen from Root and Brook, of course, over the years.

Just as it was often said that if you wanted someone to bat for your life you would pick Boycott, so if you wanted someone to completely alter the complexion of a match on the one hand, or to scrap for dear life on the other, you would be ill-advised to look much beyond Bairstow.

It is interesting, on the subject of 50-plus averages in the Championship, to contemplate Bairstow’s place on that list of the 17 Englishmen with 100 Test caps.

Only three, in fact, can claim a superior Championship average – Pietersen (59.49), Boycott (58.27) and Gooch (51.15).

That is a striking statistic when you consider the names on the list, and a particular tribute to somebody who has also kept wicket for four-fifths of his matches in the competition.

The Championship averages for the rest of that 100-cap brigade (and although there are a couple of genuine all-rounders/out-and-out bowlers in there) are Root with his aforesaid 47.52, then Thorpe (44.83), Bell (43.83), Cook (43.60), Atherton (43.09), Strauss (43.03), Cowdrey (41.06), Stewart (40.22), Gower (38.56), Botham (33.79), Stokes (33.45), Broad (20.51) and Anderson (10.25).

All of which emphasises Bairstow’s efforts and his value to the Yorkshire team through the years.

On the subject of milestones, the maestro’s next catch in the Championship will be his 250th (he has 227 as a wicketkeeper, 22 as a outfielder) and his next half-century his 40th, to go with 15 hundreds.

But then statistics never defined this most vivid of batsmen.

After all, it is the memories, not the maths, that the great ones leave behind.