3 minute read
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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