How Joe Root's risk-free approach kickstarted the biggest year of his career

It has been called England’s biggest ever year of Test cricket. If that label says something about modern sport’s penchant for hype, it also speaks to the depth of England’s challenges this year — trips to India and Australia, the two most pressurised away tours on the Test circuit, sandwiching five Tests against India this summer. By the time 2022 rolls in, England will have played 17 Tests in the year, the highest ever.

For Joe Root, then, it shapes as a year that will define his legacy as captain. In the third Ashes Test this winter, all being well, Root will captain England for the 60th time in Test cricket, breaking Alastair Cook’s record.

Over his four years as skipper, there has been abundant discussion of Root’s tactical acumen as a captain: his field placings, trust of spin, use of Jofra Archer and so on. Such discussions all have merit, yet Root himself is in no doubt of his biggest issue as skipper: his own dwindling returns with the bat. When Root inherited the crown, in 2017, he averaged 52.8 in Test cricket. In his first four years as captain, he averaged 42.5: still the best of any England batsman in this period, yet some way short of the standards that Root had set in being bracketed with Virat Kohli, Steve Smith and Kane Williamson.

“On a personal front, it’s about leading from the front and batting long,” Root told Wisden Cricket Monthly recently. “I actually think I have a point to prove… I’ve not performed as well as I would have liked in the last couple of years, especially in Test cricket. You pride yourself on making big hundreds consistently.” In an England side that has generally been good but seldom great, Root’s conversion rate has been emblematic. He did not make a Test century in 2020.

England have been through distinct phases under Root’s captaincy. In 2018-19, the side embraced a buccaneering and adventurous style: they selected batsmen based on their white-ball form, packed the team with all-rounders and sought to attack with bat and ball. Root’s 146-ball 124 at Pallekele, which went a long way to sealing the series in Sri Lanka, was one of the finest performances of this era: an innings of daring, brimming with powerful sweeps, that was in the spirit of the team he led. The snag was that such an approach led to a spate of batting collapses in 2019.

Under Chris Silverwood, Root’s England have embraced a more orthodox approach in pursuit of consistency - selecting players more on the weight of red-ball performance, trusting in specialists and not feeling so compelled to dominate. Root’s innings in Galle doubled as a template for this approach.

Where the 2018 Root’s instinctive response to a pressure situation was to counter-attack, this iteration was a little less free-wheeling. Coming in after two early wickets, Root took 30 balls over his first six runs; in defence, he smothered spin with the meticulousness of an archivist poring over a rare manuscript.

Whether in attack or defence, the defining feature of this innings was the decisiveness of Root’s footwork. The worst place to play spin is from an indeterminate position on the crease, neither properly forward nor back - vulnerable to late turn and yet not far back enough to guard against it. England’s top order were often marooned in this awkward position, but Root’s judgement, and alacrity on his feet, helped him avoid this danger zone. At tea on day two, before the rain came, he had hit only six per cent of deliveries from spinners from this in-between point, less than half the figure for the rest of England’s top four.

And so while Root’s conventional and paddle sweep allowed him to exploit any overpitched deliveries, mostly this innings was marked by low-risk accumulation, leaning upon his timing and speed between the wickets. Root’s mastery allowed him to eschew risk — he has never played a lower proportion of false shots in a century — while still scoring at a strike rate around 60. Such unobtrusive brilliance was a reminder of his status as one of England’s greatest ever players of spin: he now averages 65 against spin in Tests.

In a way it was apt that Root went to lunch on 99 not out. It would have been in the spirit of the 2018 tour of Sri Lanka to try and race to a century before an interval; Root does not think that the current side have any need to rush. And while Root’s celebration when paddling a sweep away for one shortly after lunch told of his relief at ending a 15-innings gap without Test centuries, its understated nature was revealing too. Root knows that he, and his team, will need plenty more such moments if they are to rise to the demands of 2021.

Yet this innings has done more than lay down a marker for the year. It has also provided a reminder that, whatever the year brings, Root’s status as one of England’s best greatest ever Test batsmen was long ago assured. Only six men - Alastair Cook, Graham Gooch, Alec Stewart, David Gower, Kevin Pietersen and Geoffrey Boycott - have scored more Test runs for England; Root’s average, which has now ticked above 49, is higher than them all. He only turned 30, which often mark the prime years of a batsman’s career, at the end of last year.

That Root considers himself capable of even better says more about his own drive and talents than his failings. And so, as Root passed 150 with no evidence of his gluttony saturated, it was enough to invite the tantalising thought: is his best still yet to come?