Root pile-on proves they don’t like ambition in England

ENGLAND’S recent commitment to playing attacking Test cricket, a strategy encouraged by coach Brendon McCullum and captain Ben Stokes, has elicited a strange kind of visceral hysteria from many observers of the game. When it is going well, which is often, they pay lip service to it. When it hits a bump in the road, as it did in the third Test against India in Rajkot, then Stokes, Joe Root and the rest feel the full fury of the traditionalists’ displeasure. This tour of India, and England’s approach to it, has already yielded what was widely acclaimed as one of the greatest victories in England’s history, in the first Test at Hyderabad, and one of the most swashbuckling innings in England’s history, by Ben Duckett, in the third Test. But no matter. Instead, let’s talk about Root’s reverse-scoop in the first innings in Rajkot that, instead of flying to the boundary, got England’s best batsman caught at slip. It is a difficult shot and, on this occasion, it was poorly executed. Still, some of the reaction to it was bizarre. ‘The worst, most stupid, shot in the history of England’s Test cricket,’ one respected observer wrote. The fury about Root’s ambition, the certainty that the critics knew better than the best batsman in the world, was strange to behold. The inference was that had Root not attempted the reverse-scoop, he would have amassed a huge score and, instead of being humbled in the Test, England would have won it. It was all his fault. And more to the point, it was all Bazball’s fault for having corrupted such a fine player. It’s poppycock. In the second innings, Root was out to a more conventional dismissal, trapped lbw by Ravindra Jadeja while trying to sweep. This time, there was no outcry. It is more acceptable to lose your wicket in a familiarly suppliant fashion than to fail through ambition. It is the English way.