Derek Pringle looks at the characteristics that have enabled England’s top batsman to fulfil his destiny
It seems that Joe Root was always destined for greatness, though just how great has only been revealed recently with match-winning performances across all three formats.
In an era of specialisation, that kind of successful cross-fertilisation, the ability to flit seamlessly between Tests and clear-the-rope t20, is relatively rare. Most international players have the skills to achieve it, but not the mindset – an area in which Root scores more heavily than most.
There has long been a dichotomy between those who think about things and those who do them, but Root does both, and in that order. If you speak to those who saw him at U19 level, they all say the same thing – this man was destined to play and thrive for England.
Unlike so much today, it was not an assessment based on figures. Root averaged just 21.5 for England U19s in red-ball cricket, but rather like Duncan Fletcher’s talent-spotting of Michael Vaughan and Marcus Trescothick, when their county figures were hardly exceptional, there was a certainty to Root’s potential. Unlike his peers at the time, Root was very clear and organised, especially about what he wanted to get out of practice. Most players see nets as a bit of box ticking, but Root sets out to achieve things, whether it is a new shot or just to practise his footwork.
As one of his old coaches told me: “While many players would go out and have throw-downs just to feel ball on bat, Joe would always leave the dressing-room with his pads on, ready to bat properly in a net.”
Once, on the England Performance Programme in India, he rigged up a challenging routine whereby he would face balls fired by a bowling machine onto catching ramps (hard, corrugated rectangles of plastic which send the ball off in unpredictable directions).
He wanted to sharpen his reactions and improve his footwork and hand-eye co-ordination. The practice was not only self-driven but optional but that is Root, always pushing himself in a focused way.
I certainly remember being impressed the first time I saw him bat. It was for Yorkshire against Nottinghamshire at Trent Bridge in 2011. He was 20 years old and it was only his sixth game in the County Championship. On the day I watched, he batted at three and made 89 by the close. I wrote, perhaps prematurely, that here was the new Geoffrey Boycott, an assessment made by the high price he placed on his wicket, but also on the basis of a few classic back-foot punches through the covers.
Batting with him in that match was Jonny Bairstow, who finished the day unbeaten on 50. The next morning, Root was out for 95 (not very Boycott-like) while Bairstow went on to make a double hundred. Had you asked then who would thrive more for England, most would have backed Bairstow on the numbers alone. Yet Root’s was the calmer, more assured, innings.
All cricketers who get to play for England must be driven, yet he exudes a serenity that coaches wish they could dispense to others at will. Root is too impish a wind-up merchant to be a Zen master, but he does appear to enter a higher state when he bats. Such tranquility suggests that he is no diva, though having batted in every position in England’s top seven during his Test career probably suppresses the urge. Anyway, he knows that success is too hard won to play up.
He is certainly tough, mentally as well as physically, as his one-day hundred against the West Indies in Antigua, two years ago, revealed.
On a pitch being used for the third time in a week, he suffered a nasty blow early in his innings when a quick ball from Ravi Rampaul reared up off a length and struck him on his right thumb.
Although only revealed afterwards what a nasty break it was (the bone had been shattered and required surgery), and despite all the hand-wringing pain, Root batted for another two hours to make a hundred. This was, after all, the deciding match, and there was no way he was going to give his wicket away because of a busted thumb.
It hasn’t always gone seamlessly for Root, now 25. Australia exposed a technical weakness on the last Ashes tour though he was by no means the only one that looked as if they had been ambushed after Mitchell Johnson and Ryan Harris delivered a ferocious left-right combination to lay England out.
What the Aussies noticed was his preference to hang back in his crease and play off the back foot whenever possible. Root did this because growing up he was always small for his size and lacked power off the front foot. To counter that, Australia’s bowlers simply pitched the ball up, with the odd bouncer, to mess his footwork up, and his wicket followed. It was a failing that saw him dropped from the final Test. But true to form, he went away, calmly analysed what needed to be done, and did it, in this case working on his physical strength and footwork to become a better front-foot player.
The changes have seen him reach the summit of the Test rankings (he is currently at No.2 behind Steve Smith), but it has also benefited his white-ball batting. He can now clear the ropes with the best of them though only when he needs to or when the bowler sends down a strawberry mousse or two as Imran Tahir did in the last one-dayer, when Root made 125. Mostly, his one-day strategy is to hit the gap and run, not flex his biceps. Although the punch-up with David Warner in a Birmingham bar (Root was exonerated) accorded him his moment of infamy, he appears to be nailed on as England’s next Test captain after Andrew Strauss made him Alastair Cook’s deputy last year.
One of the reasons Eddie Jones, England’s new rugby coach, made Dylan Hartley his captain was because of the way Hartley treated everyone involved, from the dinner lady to the kit man, with respect.
Root is similarly polite and considerate, but with a dry sense of humour that should help to see him through the trials of leadership. After all, this is England we’re talking about.
This piece originally featured in The Cricket Paper, Friday February 12 2016
