Ashes Cricket: Root’s wait ends in Brisbane

In quite possibly the toughest conditions for batting in Test cricket – against the pink ball that tends to swing wildly under the lights, in the post-dinner final session of the evening, no less – Joe Root finally pulled off what he hadn’t in 29 previous and relatively-easier batting occasions, spread over a dozen years of a most-storied career: score an Ashes hundred on Australian soil. When it happened late on the first day of the second Test at the Gabba, with a neat glance off Scott Boland that rolled over the fence beyond fine leg, Root shrugged his shoulders at the England dressing room and smiled wryly, as if to say ‘wonder what all the fuss was about?’

For far too long now, or at least ever since England’s greatest batsman leapfrogged over Rahul Dravid, Jacques Kallis and Ricky Ponting – the erstwhile numbers four, three and two on the all-time run-scorers list – all in one mammoth innings (150 versus India in Manchester earlier this July), Root had become central to the G.O.A.T. question in cricket. When, not if, he was to overtake Sachin Tendulkar’s tally of 15,921 Test runs, would the 34-year-old from Sheffield, Yorkshire, be universally considered the greatest batsman of all time? Fans of English cricket had no doubts that he would be, but the wider world always raised the same question, doubt, an asterisk if you may, to Root’s claim to the throne. “How can he be the greatest without a hundred in the land of his greatest rivals?”

So, despite having tallied over 13,500 Test runs before the Brisbane Test began, at an average of over 50 for nearly 160 appearances, peppered with 39 hundreds, many of them scored in the most trying of conditions – especially those notched on rank-turners in the subcontinent – Root was considered an incomplete great: a man with all accomplishments but one. A blindingly glaring one at that. He corrected that on Thursday, some five hours into a six-plus hour vigil worth 135 runs, yet to be beaten by stumps on Day One. In many ways, Root hadn’t just ended all debate about his legacy with his 40^th Test hundred, he had completed his story long before he retires or even passes Tendulkar’s mark; he has now ascertained his eventual position as the greatest modern-day Test batsman of all time, statistically or otherwise.

Make no mistake, it wasn’t an easy innings to construct even before the floodlights at the Brisbane ground came into effect. For this was the Gabba – nicknamed the Gabbatoir for its slaughter-house effect on batsmen – and before England’s No.4 bat knew it, he was walking out to the middle as early as the third over of the day, after the irrepressible Mitchell Starc (who would finish the day with six wickets, while also passing Wasim Akram’s tally of 414 Test wickets to become the greatest left-arm seamer in the game) had reduced the visitors to 5/2.

Root was understandably very watchful, so much so that he took nearly an hour to move from a score of 70 to 80 in the final session of the day, a period that witnessed a semi-collapse at the other end, beginning with the needless run-out of captain Ben Stokes. Across three previous Ashes tours Down Under, Root had a top-score of 89, which he inched towards on Thursday, before charging right past it. On 88, he played out a maiden over to all-rounder Cameron Green, shortly before cutting loose against one-Test-old Brendan Doggett, consecutive leg-side boundaries taking him into the 90s in Australia for the very first time.

To long shouts of ‘Rooooooot’ from the packed crowd, the locals as well as the Barmy Army egging the batsman on, Root nudged a delivery that took him to the elusive three-figure score in Australia. Finally, then, he had found the missing link, a knock that has already earmarked him for absolute greatness, long before the batting essay has even ended.