For England this was the best kind of disruption. Orthodox disruption. Soothing disruption. The quietly rhythmical paradigm shift. In Ranchi Joe Root pushed the envelope, but did it gently, batting through the opening day with the air of a man reaching down into a deep, familiar place and feeling once again the depth and richness of his own prodigious talent.
Root was in the middle for five hours and 12 minutes, from a skittish morning with India’s seamers finding leap and jag, right through to Yashasvi Jaiswal rolling out some sundowner leg-breaks in the evening light. He batted 226 balls for his 106 not out, scored 48 singles and explored the full range of minutely controlled bat-face glances against the spinners.
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It was a genuinely high-class Test hundred, for reasons that go far beyond the skill and concentration involved; beyond even, believe it or not, the end-of-day chat about Mature Bazball, the Bazball now oozing and seeping and gaining complexity, riper and richer in its own bacteria.
There is a theory that Root is the real hero of the Bazball era because despite being an all-time great and former captain he has completely put aside his own ego, bought into the new stuff without question, even when that new stuff is so often riffing on how bad things were under him by comparison.
There is undeniably a certain amount of – how to put this? – bullshit that goes along with the essential Bazball vibe, stuff Root is too steeped in cricket not to occasionally wince at. He has never once blinked or let his levels drop, even when England have lost, and even when his own interpretation of the style has become the wider story.
On one hand playing on post-captaincy hasn’t always offered close to a million quid for every year you can make it work which, as a great man once said, ought to take the sting out of being occupied. But forget the captaincy. Root has been a sensational senior pro these last two years, one of the all-time great wingmen.
For now it was just a wonderful moment to score an unbeaten hundred: batting first on what looked to be a pre-lunch rubbish tip, already 2-1 down in the series and starting to wobble, on the back of a poor three-month run.
It was also beautiful to watch, in a way that brings out the deeper shades and shadows in this format, the kind of innings that lures you into a comfortable submission with its nudges and rundowns. Root rocked back or pressed forward so quickly the length of each delivery seemed to have been arranged by mutual consent in advance. He played straight because the pitch demanded it, doing it so easily and naturally the bat just seems to be an extension of his arms, the movements entirely his own.
The best part, for Root, will be the fact his innings has given England a chance in this game although only a Bazball ingenue would make any prediction to that end. This team is mercurial – which is another way of saying not really that good – but so committed to its methods it will still win days and sessions and hours whatever the final result.
It is of course now necessary to talk a little about Bazball, because even when there is no Bazball, what remains must be defined by the absence of Bazball, the Bazball-shaped hole, and what that hole tells us about the real subject, which is Bazball.
There is a glimpse here of how deeply annoying England must be to play against, because the story must always be us. Watch us publicly reject the idea of practice then lose by 400 runs. But it’s fine because you cannot, just cannot take the good bits of Bazball and then not like the bad bits too! Why?!! Don’t know! That’s just what people say!
And win or lose we will fill this space, will basically try to recolonise Test cricket by making the most noise, like gap year schoolboys on a Kerala beach talking in a really, really loud voice about how great the locals (who hate you) are, and how much they just love listening to you play the guitar all night.
Never go back. It was that kind of pitch. WG Grace was once cheered wildly at Lord’s for blocking three successive shooters (these were simpler times; there was no streaming TV). Here Ben Stokes was hit on the ankle right in front just before lunch. Either side of which Root successfully disarmed what felt like a tick-tocking, ready-to-blow England collapse.
No Jasprit Bumrah helped, as did putting away the scoop-hoick because it seemed the right thing to do on this pitch; but also, surely, because it’s something he just doesn’t need that often, extreme match tactics aside.
Root just knows how to play these situations, which is basically to be Root, to remember that he was already playing aggressive, winning cricket when he was captain, it was just that the rest of the team couldn’t keep up with him. Perhaps Rohit Sharma could have applied more pressure early on after lunch to Root and Ben Foakes, before a late, vigorous unbroken partnership with Ollie Robinson, who batted with disarming ease. The pitch either got flat, or looked flat because Root damped it down. But this was entirely his day.
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