Over his illustrious cricketing career, the English skipper, Joe Root has honed his skills in playing the sweep shot against spinners, and he is absolutely ready for the “mini-battle” with Ravichandran Ashwin in the upcoming four-Test series against India starting on Friday. On the eve of the opening Test against India, Root told the story of how he mastered the art of playing sweep shot, which hasn’t been easy to execute for his contemporaries like Virat Kohli or Steve Smith hardly play.

Talking about the same during the virtual press conference, Joe Root said, “I had to find a way to get the ball off the square against any spinners in particular as there was no pace to work with. And sweep was one shot where I could generate the maximum power. So learning to play that well was pretty much a scoring option for the large proportion of my junior career.”

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Explaining the risk assessment while playing the sweep shot, Joe Root said, “For me, it’s about understanding playing online or on the length and understanding the surface, whether the bounce is going to be an issue or the lateral movement or turn, and trying to factor all those in and calculate the risks to play in a shot.”

There was an obvious question on Big Four and Root, who has often been seen expressing his admiration for Kohli, Smith, and Williamson, as it keeps him on the right track of always try to learn and improve.

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Elboarating the same, Root said, “Obviously they are three leading players in the world and I try and learn from them. It is silly not to learn how they go about their innings, control passages of play, manage their own game and keep evolving all the time. There’s no one right way of batting or bowling. Everyone can figure it out themselves. Individual battles is not something that I would look at. What I would look at is always trying to win this series.”