Peter Hayter is impressed by the Surrey man’s enterprising strokeplay
Those present at the Ageas Bowl the other night who remember watching Graham Gooch in his sublime prime could have been forgiven for thinking that, in Jason Roy, they had just seen the cricketing equivalent of a ghost.
Happening to be among a group of Essex players during a Championship match with Surrey back in the day, I recall their reaction when England’s second highest Test run-scorer stood tall and biffed a ball off his hip to the midwicket boundary with a perpendicular bat.
First there was silence. Then came the words, from off-spinner Peter Such, a colleague of Gooch for club and country, but in this instant, just a fan.
“How the hell does he play that shot?” he asked. The question was, of course, rhetorical. The answer was obvious – because he is a genius.
And if anyone who never saw it wants to know what that shot looked like they should find themselves the tape of the third over of England’s successful chase in the first match of their Royal London ODI series against Pakistan, when Roy did exactly the same to the second ball bowled by Umar Gul.
Gul, the most experienced member of the Pakistan attack, set his field just how he wanted it and his first delivery, straight and just short of a length at 83.5 mph, was defended to mid-on with all due care and attention.
The next was a fraction shorter and fraction straighter and Roy met it at the top of its bounce, pointed his bat in the direction he wanted it to go and ordered the ball to boundary, to the right of the fielder at midwicket, all along the ground. Just like Gooch used to do.
On Sky TV Michael Holding and Wasim Akram echoed what Such had uttered all those years before. “He made that look very easy,” purred the West Indies legend. All the greatest ever Pakistan paceman could manage was: “What a shot!” In fact he said it twice.
Roy was nowhere near finished. Two balls later, with Gul striving for a fuller length, he leant into a
classical on-drive, played it in front of his body with his head rock-still, just as Gooch used to do, and sent it scuttling past the same fielder for four, this time to his left. Then, when Gul compensated by pushing one fractionally outside off-stump, Roy smashed it to the cover boundary to bring up 12 runs for the over, just like Gooch used to do.
It was breathtaking, technically flawless and just plain beautiful to watch, with traces of showmanship and panache bordering on arrogance that have invited comparison to another champion, Roy’s hero Kevin Pietersen.
But from the final ball of the seventh over, he completed the set of Gooch impressions, on one knee to sweep the slow left-armer Imad Wasim behind square for six. And how the old pro would have appreciated him taking a gentle single from the next delivery to get down the other end and clear his head.
And it was a genuine surprise when he failed to convert an ODI fifty in to a century for the first time in four opportunities, for his mastery of the bowling and conditions was as complete as it had been when he took two hundreds off Sri Lanka earlier in the summer. Which brings us to what the winter may hold for him.
With England still searching for a partner for Alastair Cook at the top of their Test batting order, Roy could not have chosen a better man of whom to conjure up images than Gooch, the England captain’s mentor and guide, the man he grew up watching and wanting to emulate, and whose Test run record he has overtaken.
If opening the innings is a little too high for some tastes, however, there are other spots in the top five up for grabs.
Those who question Roy’s credentials point to a far-from-convincing return in county cricket, but when, with little better to go on, punts were taken on Michael Vaughan and Marcus Trescothick,
England collected 32 Test hundreds as winnings. And really, with shots like those Roy possesses, talk of stats seems almost disrespectful.
Can he play Test cricket? England will never know until they try him, but the same has been asked of Alex Hales, James Vince and Gary Ballance and many will feel Roy already looks a far better bet than any of the above.
“Does he want to?” may be the more pertinent enquiry. Publicly he has said yes, resoundingly, though he and his advisers know the 26-year-old would be box-office royalty for a T20 franchise this winter if he fancied that more than a long slog around Bangladesh and India.
The comment of assistant coach Paul Farbrace when asked the direct question raised more questions than answers because, “I hope he does”, was not the response to stop such speculation.
Finding something better to do than play Test cricket for England – their supporters must hope that is another area where the similarity between Gooch and Roy holds good and the one with KP ends.
This piece originally featured in The Cricket Paper, Friday August 26 2016
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