For a while there, it seemed like Joseph Edward Root would be pushed out of the ‘Fab Four’ of international batsmen. A cover-driving Pakistani—Babar Azam—and a Steve Smith impersonator—Marnus Labuschagne—were snapping at his heels. The Yorkshire lad had averaged 39.70 across 2018, 2019 and 2020, taking his overall career mark drop from 52.45 to 48.41. For his critics, Root had lost his seat at the table of four; for supporters, he was still there, but even they conceded that he was sitting on a wobbly chair.
Cut to August 14, 2021. In front of Lord’s crowd, Root brought up his 22nd Test century; his seventh against India. During that innings, he also went past former captain Graham Gooch to become England’s second-highest scorer in Tests. He crossed 9,000 runs, and is only behind another former skipper, Alaistair Cook (12,472).
A few days prior, he had dug his team out of a hole with one of his best and most fluid tons, setting up a cracking day five (rain intervened to end the game in a draw).
After that century, former English cricketer Rob Key wrote in the Evening Standard: “Root smiled throughout. He made his name as a cheeky chappy, but experience and captaincy inevitably wear a player down. He has not had an easy summer, given his team’s performances and the absentees, but here was Root grinning his way through quite a spicy Test match.”
It is hard to overstate Root’s importance to his team’s batting fortunes, especially in the absence of all-rounder Ben Stokes. No English batter since 1968 has averaged better than Root. His current 49.41 is better than that of two modern stalwarts of English cricket—Kevin Pietersen (47.28) and Cook (45.35). He has scored the most Test runs in 2021 (10 matches 1,125 runs; excluding the ongoing Test), and has made 27.34 per cent of his team’s totals this year. The next best to do so was Viv Richards; he made 27.03 per cent of the West Indies’ runs in 1976.
So, what changed? How did he overcome the slump? “I’ve actually felt a real benefit from playing some white-ball cricket (against Sri Lanka in June-July),” he said on the eve of day five of the first Test against India. “More than anything, up from New Zealand (Lord’s Test in June), I’ve changed a few things. I felt I got forward and back better. I was standing a lot taller a lot earlier, picking my bat up a lot earlier. I feel like I’ve got rhythm back in my hands.”
On commentary, former Indian captain Sunil Gavaskar observed that Root had, in 2021, taken a middle-stump guard instead of on off-stump, which he said reduced the chances of the batter getting trapped leg before wicket.
Whatever the technical corrections, English supporters would be chuffed to have their captain back in top form. Though he had made a double hundred in India earlier this year, the rest of the tour was subpar. In fact, some of his daddy hundreds have, in the past, pushed up his average and “masked some failures” (read #RootMaths, circa 2013). Though these are early days, England would be hoping that Root’s consistency in this series—one fifty and two hundreds in three innings against a team like India—continues till the Ashes later in the year.
While on a panel for ESPNcricinfo in February this year, former England batter Ian Bell predicted that Root would return to the ‘Fab Four’ in 2021. With his current form, and a little over four months to go, it would be hard to bet against Bell. And Root.
