66: Joe Root

114 matches. 9600 runs @ 49.23. 23 hundreds. Highest score: 254

11 years. 2x good. 3x excellent. 2x outstanding.

The discussion

What a tremendous 2021 Joe Root is having. Amidst all the complications of COVID-19, bubble environments, revised schedules, players missing from squads for various reasons, and the continued malaise that seems to permeate the England top order, it is easy to forget that Root is in the form of his life. Since the start of 2020, Root has 1,741 runs from 33 innings at an average of 58.03, with five six hundreds and five fifties. Oh, and by the way, those five six centuries all came in 2021, and include two double hundreds and a 180*. He’s not done yet either. As I write this, Joe Root is readying for the Ashes in Australia. By the end of that series, he could easily add another hundred or two (dare England fans hope for three?) and set all kinds of records for runs and hundreds in a calendar year.

Now, before we really dive in here, I will say that there’s plenty to talk about with Joe Root, because I have watched him a lot over the past two years. Yes, there’s recency bias there, but there’s also a lot to unpack. So let’s get into it, shall we?

Joe Root has always suffered, in my mind, from being compared with the other members of the modern ‘big four’: Virat Kohli, Steve Smith and Kane Williamson. (Actually, many people would argue it should be a ‘big five’ when you consider how much success Babar Azam has enjoyed over the past few years.) In those comparisons, Root is often pegged as a distant fourth, but actually if you look at their records this isn’t really the case:

Root clearly leads all the counting stats — most runs, most fifties, most scores over fifty (hundreds plus fifties) by virtue of having played more Tests. Root’s average is fourth, but rapidly closing in on Kohli. Ditto number of hundreds — catching Kane Williamson (24 hundreds) is not out of the question this summer if Root continues his rich vein of form into the Ashes.

Not only is Root closer to the big four than many think, he has also has an extended streak of excellent performances during his career. Batting isn’t easy in England (I have said this before) and at the time of writing Root’s average is a tick over 50, with over 9,200 Test runs. Root fans will point to the years 2014–17 (4605 runs @ 57.6, 11 hundreds) as a sign of his greatness. Add to that no less than 14 Test series in which he averaged over 50, including seven series with an average of over 75. Those peak series are the tip of the iceberg in terms of his run-scoring feats.

Root’s critics will point to 2018–20 (2263 runs @ 39.7, four hundreds) after he took over as England captain as evidence that he’s a step below the others in the big four/big five. They might also highlight his conversion rate of fifties to hundreds. And prior to 2021, pundits might have had a point:

There’s no doubt that, until recently, Root struggled to convert fifties to hundreds. Indeed, he holds the somewhat dubious record for the longest streak of fifties in consecutive Tests, which sits at 12. In those 12 Tests, Root scored 13 fifties (and a 49), only going on to score a century twice. So yes, for a while there, getting from 50 to 100 was not plain sailing for Joe Root.

2021 has already changed the narrative for many of those critics. Root has put to bed the conversion issue with his recent run of big scores. He very much deserves to be discussed alongside the other elite batters of this era.

Let’s also look at his captaincy, and we’ll pay nothing more than lip service to the stats (he averaged 52.8 under Cook, with 11 hundreds; and averages 47.79 as captain with 12 hundreds) because we’ve already covered enough stats in this discussion. Instead, let’s focus on the narrative.

In this modern COVID age of cricket, the difficulty of captaining a side sits in a whole new tier of its own. Players are coming and going from squads for various reasons, there is a lot more uncertainty about who is available, and sometimes even if the team is playing at all. Planning has become more challenging, as captains navigate the uncertainty of who might be in their side from Test to Test, series to series, and also the unknown of who might or might not be in the opposition for any given match. As a man manager, and as the face of the England men’s cricket team, I think Joe Root has been an exceptional leader. Recent praise from Ben Stokes about Root’s recent success as an example that the England players look to be 100 per cent behind their skipper.

The only fly in the ointment is the occasional on-field tactic that leaves me with the impression that Root is sometimes too negative/too conservative as a captain. There’s nothing wrong with the approach to cricket that says ‘let’s avoid defeat, first-and-foremost. If we can put ourselves in a position to win, then great, otherwise we’ll take a draw’. This ‘secure the draw first’ approach isn’t exclusively an English mindset, but it is pretty common with English captains, and is often criticised by those who prefer the audacious ‘win first, draw second, avoid defeat third’ approach of a captain like Brendon McCullum or Ricky Ponting, or more recently India’s Ajinkya Rahane.[1] It isn’t the approach that I’m concerned with, it’s that the approach can lead to overly negative tactics when there is an opportunity to be decisive, and risk losing to go for a win. It’s very difficult to win a Test match, and in my view I’d rather my captain tried to win a game even if there was a risk it could go wrong, rather than rule out a win in an attempt to avoid a loss.

Two examples that immediately come to mind (and yes, there’s recency bias here) are the first Test against New Zealand in 2021, and the second Test in the home series against India, also in 2021.

New Zealand set England 273 off 70 overs on the final day, and regardless of the prevailing run rates during the Test until that point, England had an opportunity to go for a win. Perhaps they felt that without Jos Buttler, Jonny Bairstow or Jason Roy in the side, they didn’t have the firepower to chase down (roughly) four an over. Many thought that the target was achievable — Joe Root disagreed — and the team played out a rather tame draw. The lost opportunity cost England dearly — New Zealand won the second Test and handed Root his first series defeat as captain on home soil.

The India Test was a slightly different scenario. England were in a strong position to bowl India out in the second innings, having reduced them to 194-7. With no recognised batters left at the crease, England would have fancied themselves to knock over a traditionally fragile Indian lower order and give themselves a small chase on the final day. In this case, negative fields and a reliance on short-pitched bowling[2] was England’s undoing.  India’s tail not only survived but also built a match-winning partnership. You could almost see England’s top order wilting as the Indian tail piled on the runs. A target of 272 was always out of reach, yet I suspect that a target of 200 would have been a completely different contest, such was the demoralising effect of the 89-run unbeaten stand between Mohammed Shami and Jasprit Bumrah.

Criticism of Root’s captaincy may seem harsh in the context of what is an otherwise stellar leadership record. But I just can’t help thinking how much better Joe Root could be as a leader if he were a touch bolder, or his plans were more aggressive. His Test captaincy record does speak to a low percentage of draws, but I still feel that there is room for improvement in his tactics as captain[3]. Bottom line is I want Joe Root to be a great captain, not just a good one.

The verdict

All this talk of tactics and critique about Joe Root’s captaincy might be recency bias, and it might be nitpicking. And it is, a little bit. Especially given that Root has one of the lowest draw percentages of any captain (roughly 15 per cent).

What I will say is that these are the only flaws I can find in an otherwise stellar character, and a tremendous player. Joe Root is could one day become one of, if not the greatest batter for England, certainly he is already one of the best in the world in his generation. If Joe Root can continue to produce at anywhere near his 2021 levels for the rest of his career, expect his name to rise significantly in the Hall of Fame in the coming years. Even as I write this sentence, I have made the decision to move Joe Root up several places, to where he will sit when you read this, at 66, the top of ‘The Club’. Where could he end up? Will we be talking about him as one of the best 50 players to play Test cricket? The best 20? Will he rise above Sir Alistair Cook? Only time will tell. And for where Cook sits on this list, well you’ll just have to wait and see . . .

In one word

Character

Notes

[1] In fact, I’m pretty sure the McCullum approach didn’t consider options two and three at all. It was just ‘try to win’.

[2] aka the ‘Neil Wagner trap’. But if you don’t have Neil Wagner, this tactic rarely works as effectively as you think it might. Bowling consistently at the stumps allows for at least three modes of dismissal. Bowling short allows for just one, and if you don’t succeed almost immediately you can look pretty silly, and, if I’m honest, like a bit of a bully.

[3] And, if I’m being fair, this holds true of many modern captains, not just Joe Root. Too often in modern cricket, captains wait for a batter to make a mistake, rather than trying to work to a plan to get the batter out.

Bio

Record

Source: ESPN CricInfo

career peak

Source: ESPN CricInfo