There were a couple of moments, ahead of the opening match of the 5-match series between India and England in Nottingham when the fan would’ve guessed that Joe Root will be carrying the burden of England’s batting line-up. Root was, no doubt, aware of how much England will be missing the fiery all-rounder, Ben Stokes. Team India visited England ahead of the ICC World Test Championship final against New Zealand which is being followed by the much-awaited Test series.
But whatever the pressure he faced ahead of the Nottingham, Joe Root has shouldered his burden magnificently. However, the Test match was also marked as the return of people to international cricket in the UK as the fans are now watching the cricket live. He churned out a brilliant century against the Indian cricket team. His tally has reached 21 centuries in the longest format of the game and some of the top cricket sites applauded his effort. Without him, England would have been blown away.
There was a period, not so long ago, there were certain doubts regarding Root’s batting and it was more about him scoring runs in relatively low-intensity situations. To put his predominance in perspective, while Root amassed 109 and 64 in the Nottingham Test, the next best score of his teammates across both innings has been Sam Curran’s 32. It is, according to BBC statistician Andy Zaltzman, only the fourth time in Test history that a player has made a century and half-century in a cricket match where none of the other players managed to surpassed the 40-run mark.
Root’s skills were put into context when he made a strong partnership of 89 runs with Dom Sibley for the third wicket with Dom Sibley. So vast was his range of stroke, as he is rarely kept the scorecard at a halt. He faced just a couple of maidens in his entire innings – one of them during a nervous passage of play when he had 97. But it was surely the drives, played off both front and back foot, that will be remembered by the fans.
More than that, though, Joe Root seems to have made a conscious effort to try and enjoy these pressures. Instead of allowing him to become stressed, the English skipper tried to remember he was playing the game he loves, for a team he loves and on the grandest of stages. He reckoned that batting in the ODI series against Sri Lanka helped him regaining his rhythm back. He made 68 and 79 – both innings unbeaten.
Maybe we shouldn’t have been surprised. Joe Root has earned a name for himself in 2021, producing a string of huge scores in Sri Lanka and India (228 and 186 in Galle and 218 in Chennai) that led his team to register some memorable wins. He’s already made 1,064 Test runs this year. So, with up to seven further Tests available to him this year and that means he has (there are only three Ashes Tests scheduled before the end of the year this time and none of them may take place), he has given himself a chance of breaking Mohammad Yousuf’s record of 1,788 runs in a calendar year.
Whether all this is sustainable in the long term is debatable. At some stage, Joe Root will suffer a breakdown owing to all this burden, but till then England needs to find a way to coax more runs out of the rest of their batting line-up.
