Posted by Joe Root reached his latest hundred with one of those reverse sweeps of his. We’ve seen them plenty of times before, of course. We’ve seen all of it plenty of times before. It doesn’t stop being impressive, but it’s become a nagging, cumulative impressiveness that never really leaves you, rather than the percussive, hit-you-over-the-head impressiveness of a new and remarkable thing.
We’re going to level with you: Joe Root is not a batter who is much fun to write about. Don’t get us wrong, we like him very much and of all the England Test batters we’ve seen, Root has been the most reliably brilliant. We just don’t massively enjoy writing about his innings.
That isn’t to say we don’t enjoy writing about Root. He was a great captain to write about, which perhaps goes some way towards explaining why he is such a dreadful batter to write about.
Root’s bowling is fun to write about too. He dismissed Pakistan’s number 11 with a bouncer yesterday, for example, taking out one of England’s openers for a period in the process.
Root’s fielding is fun to write about as well.
His batting? Not so much.
A lot of it comes down to his clinical efficiency. He’s always been a lot more Sachin Tendulkar than Brian Lara – relentlessly effective, rather than intermittently serving up triple, quadruple or quintuple hundreds. We didn’t write about Tendulkar very often.
If we’ve ever had anything worthwhile to say about Root, we’ve probably said it already. It’s not like he hasn’t given us opportunities. We’ve written about him twice this year already. In the first one, we commended his ability to consistently work things out more reliably than any of his team-mates. The next one was a feature about how he has been so persistently excellent that at times it hasn’t even felt that interesting.
That’s essentially what we’re saying again today. It’s not that we’re running out of superlatives here. It’s that we’ve run out of ways to say “we’re running out of superlatives”.
Joe Root’s career has now officially transcended cliché. Is there any greater sporting compliment than that?
And so, once again, we find ourself looking at the guy at the other end.
Harry Brook is still fun to write about. At one point today, he hit the ball into his own stumps via the ground and then his neck, but managed to avoid dislodging a bail.
Root has no time for such shenanigans. ‘Hitting the ball into your own stumps via ground and neck? Why would you hit the ball into your own stumps at all?’ he wonders.
So he doesn’t. Instead, Joe Root hits it into space and runs to the other end and becomes England’s all-time leading Test run-scorer.
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I had little time to watch today, but when I saw that Root was approaching Cooks’ record, I had to watch for a while.
The on drive for four that got him to that 71 figure…the one that meant blah blah blah…was a very, very good shot. Of course I have seen him do that before. I saw him live, scoring two centuries in the same match only a few weeks ago.
Which brings me to my other point. One of the reasons it is hard for you to write about Roots batting is that so many test matches seem to be coming around so often at the moment. He seems to be able to score big runs in most of those matches.
That’s true actually. Being relentlessly brilliant comes across as even more relentless these days, given the schedule.
Too many Cooks, Ged.
Well spotted. Cook’s record.
But, on reflection, Joe Root has also (long since) exceeded Geoff Cook’s test match run scoring record, so in this match he approached and has now exceeded both Cooks’ records. Indeed he is now (overnight Day 3 to 4) only 98 runs away from and therefore approaching the aggregate Cooks’ record.
That’s obviously what I meant. Obviously.
I think it was Jarrod Kimber who years ago wrote that the one thing Joe Root does better than anyone else is manipulate the ball into space for 1’s and 2’s which is obviously a great skill to have but isn’t as sexy to write about as some player who’s developed a freakish new shot. I fear that we should enjoy Jamie Smith and Harry Brook now while they still play the occasional ridiculous shot and before they mature into relentless Joe Root-style accumulators of runs.
If the UK Government want to sort out the pothole issue they could do worse than get the curator/groundsperson from Multan in, they clearly know how to prepare a flat road.
It’s just a shame that Root seems to struggle in the 260s, while Brook just doesn’t seem able to get past that magical 320 figure.
Where’s the stamina? Where’s the hunger for runs?
It would never have been like this in my day.