Jonathan Marc Bairstow (or Jonny Bairstow) could have chosen Rugby or Football for a professional career, but chose to become a cricketer. Bairstow hails from a rich cricketing background, with his father, David Bairstow being a wicket-keeper himself and former England cricketer Geoffrey Boycott being a family friend of the Bairstows.

Born on September 26 1989 in Bradford, Bairstow first played County cricket for Yorkshire before making his international debut in 2011 in a T20 game against West Indies. He broke into the One Day side in the same year and a year later, made his Test debut.

The year 2016 could be named as the year of Bairstow. In 2016, Bairstow set a new record for the most dismissals (70) by a wicket-keeper in a calendar year. In the same year, Bairstow also set a record for most runs in Test matches by a wicket-keeper in a single year. By scoring 1,470 runs in Tests in the year, Bairstow almost doubled the previous record of 777 for England wicket-keepers set by Matt Prior in 2012, and comprehensively surpassed the former record for any Test country of 1,045 runs, held by former Zimbabwe wicket-keeper Andy Flower. He is the first England cricketer to score three consecutive one-day international hundreds. He also became the first England wicket-keeper to claim nine dismissals in a Test match twice, against South Africa and Sri Lanka, both of which came in 2016. Stokes and Bairstow put together a world record 399 runs for the sixth wicket in 2016 and where Bairstow made a 150.

As he is from Yorkshire, he was nicknamed Yorkshire Jonny Bairstow aka YJB.

In recent years, Jonny Bairstow and Jason Roy have formed a formidable opening pair for England in the limited overs form. Bairstow was also influential in England winning the ICC Cricket World Cup 2019.