Joe Root now needs less than 2000 Test runs to overhaul Sachin Tendulkar’s 15921 runs to become the most prolific run getter in world. He is 35, pretty fit, and since England play a lot of Tests, he is most likely to outrun Tendulkar. He is England’s greatest batsman and one of the modern-day’s best, but can he be labelled one of the all-time-greats of the game?
It feels churlish to raise this point at this juncture, especially when he has scored a fine 160 in the fifth Ashes Test even as his younger combustible team-mates seemed fatally attracted to self-destruction, but greatness exacts a demanding standard.
Against two of the best fast bowlers of his era, Jasprit Bumrah and Pat Cummins, Root has been poor. Cummins has seen him off 13 times for an average of 22.6, Bumrah 11 times for 30.3. Josh Hazlewood too has taken him out 10 times for not much.
Incidentally, both his hundreds in the current Ashes series came when both Cummins and Hazlewood were absent. And he had never scored a Test ton in Australia before this series. He is certainly one of the best among his contemporaries but greatness requires something more than ephemeral.
Joe Root celebrates his 41st Test century in the SCG Ashes Test on Monday. (AP Photo)
It’s not these dismissals to Cummins in this series or ones against Hazlewood and Bumrah in the past that keeps the fastidious bouncers of that greatness club to stop him at the gate, but the pattern to his struggles that raise the question. It’s his inadequacy in coming up with the solutions to the same pattern of probing that raises that query.
Cummins has repeatedly targeted him around the off stump, and harassed him by getting the ball to straighten to take out either the off stump or brush the outside edge. As variation, he has cut a few in to trap him lbw. Ditto Hazlewood.
Is it a shame if the top three bowlers of the era dismiss in similar fashion through the career? Definitely not, when the final run tally with runs accrued against other quality pacers from around the world has brought him towards the summit. But the greatness tag certainly comes under the hammer. How else can one then determine greatness if not performances against the very best? Else, so many really good batsmen can waltz into that exclusive club.
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You take out the sense of balance from a batsman, you take him out. Over the years, Cummins, Bumrah and Hazlewood have done exactly that to Root.
One can suss out that Cummins makes Root, the batsman who uses the crease generally really well, feel claustrophobic at the crease. It’s as if one by one all escape routes are shut. And he is cornered into a small tight space. Stuck inside the crease, the feet going nowhere, it all gets a bit much.
He has had the problem of head falling over and Cummins exploits it with the nip-backers. When Root begins to move closer to the off-stump guard to try bat straighter and be stiller with the head, Cummins begins to harass him with straighteners and away-shapers in combination with the nip-backers. It would appear with that stance there is no real gap for the ball to ping the off stump but Cummins has repeatedly done it. Most memorably, in the pink ball Test in Adelaide last time Root landed up Down Under, when he curved the ball away past the prod to knock out the off stump. In this series, he was caught in similar tight spot, and edged Cummins behind.
But the space he gets into against Cummins is noteworthy: cramped, retreating inside, nowhere to go, living on a prayer. Not the walking-down Root, not the stretching-forward Root, not the press-back to punch Root. Cummins has had that effect.
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It’s what Bumrah has also done to him in the past. With that combo of nip-backers and away-shapers. Bumrah’s natural extended-arm release and the inherent illusion it creates as if the ball is tailing in has proven a fatal attraction for Root. His arms betray him and then he jabs and stabs.
Virat Kohli has had troubles against James Anderson but he recovered from the depths of 2014 series. The greatness gate also closed on him near the end of his career with his repeated failures outside off stump and also, an increasing vulnerability against quality spin in helpful conditions. Kane Williamson too has tapered off every now and then, and his record in Australia isn’t great.
Only Steve Smith, who along with these three formed the fab four of this generation, can confidently strut towards the greatness world.
Root’s troubles against three best bowlers of his time has been a continuing affair and especially the mode of dismissals where he begins to look like an imposter is at another level. And worrying. The gates of the greatness club are half-shut as of now. Root isn’t a lamb, but not a GOAT either.
