An ugly hoick brought an end to a weird innings. Joe Root threw caution to the wind and it brought about his downfall in the second Test against India in Vizag. Ravichandran Ashwin got a wicket and edged closer to 500 Test scalps. But England’s best batter getting out in that fashion struck an uneasy chord.
Root was carrying a finger injury, as England chased 399 for victory in the fourth innings in Vizag. But it would be too simplistic to suggest that the former England captain’s no-holds-barred approach was down to the injury only. After Brendon McCullum and Ben Stokes took charge of the England Test team two years ago and launched Bazball, there has been a paradigm shift in Root’s batting approach. He is trying to be a Bazballer, at the expense of his natural game.
Has it augured well for the man who has 11,468 runs from 137 Tests, including 30 centuries? Stats suggest otherwise. In the last 20 Tests pre-Bazball, Root played 39 innings and scored 2,066 runs at an average of 54.36. His strike rate was 55.27. On the other hand, in the first 20 Tests during the Bazball era, the 33-year-old has played 35 innings, scoring 1,579 runs at an average of 52.63. His strike rate has increased to 75.01. The average, despite a fall, is still very creditable. But there’s a catch.
During the Bazball era, Root has played seven Tests away from home, scoring 496 runs. And there’s a significant drop in his average, 41.33. One advantage that England batters have while playing at home is that they barely go beyond a few permanent Test centres and know the conditions like the back of their hand. For example, Root, from Yorkshire, has played 10 Tests at Headingley, his home patch, during his 12-year Test career yet. Compare that with Virat Kohli, the boy from Delhi, who made his Test debut in 2011. Over a span of 13 years, Kohli has played only four Tests at Feroz Shah Kotla, now known as the Arun Jaitley Stadium.
For the Latest Sports News: Click Here
During an interaction with Lawrence Booth, editor of Wisden Cricketers’ Almanack, via direct messages on X, the senior cricket correspondent agreed that a part of England’s high-octane batting approach comes from the fact that the majority of their batters don’t have a good defensive game. McCullum and Stokes have rightly decided to play to the team’s strengths and it has proved to be spectacularly effective. The side that had won just one Test in 17 before appointing McCullum and Stokes as the coach and captain respectively, have now won 14 out of 20 Test matches.
Also, every frontline batter, bar Root, has benefited from the new approach, in terms of runs, averages and strike-rates. Ollie Pope has been the biggest beneficiary, enjoying a positive average difference of 24.54 and a strike rate difference of 27.43. Zak Crawley, who has massively improved his game around the off stump, has a positive average difference of 17.12 and a strike rate surge of 26.29. So far so good, but as former England captain Alastair Cook has pointed out, Root is struggling to match Bazball’s tempo.
Does he really need to fit into the gung-ho mode? England haven’t made a radical overhaul of Test batsmanship. India revelled in their blazing tempo, when Virender Sehwag opened for them, but it was the opener’s natural game and the other batters, including Sachin Tendulkar, who had every shot in the book, played at their own pace. Australia under Ricky Ponting scored at four runs per over for fun. Root, who was seen batting left-handed at the nets before the second Test, probably would do well to follow Michael Vaughan’s suggestion.
“I don’t mind some of them playing like that because they are better for it. But Joe Root should forget it. He has 10,000 Test runs playing like Joe Root. He doesn’t need to be a Bazballer,” England’s Ashes-winning former captain wrote in his Daily Telegraph column. He added: “It is time for someone in the management to put an arm around Joe and say ‘please just be yourself’.”
Three years ago, when England had toured India, Root was the team’s highest run-getter, scoring 368 from four matches, including a magnificent double hundred at Chepauk. Some of the games in that series were played on virtual minefields and yet, the senior batter finished with an excellent average of 46. After two matches in the ongoing Test series, Root has 52 runs at an average of 13. Maybe, he needs to go back to move forward.
Also Read: How Convincing Ishant Sharma Paved the Way for Workload Management