The tougher it gets, the more Root revels in the battle
THE text message is a recurring one: ‘ There’ll be two tickets left on the gate for you.’ It is an annual exchange and refers to a boyhood pledge from a young batsman to his coach regarding Lord’s Test matches.
The sender Joe Root. The recipient Kevin Sharp, as influential a figure as anyone in Root’s journey to becoming his country’s best player and now its Test captain.
Until recently, all offers were declined. However, this year Sharp, now part of Worcestershire’s backroom staff, will be at Lord’s on July 6 to see 26-year-old Root play against South Africa.
‘He will walk out as captain of England, and it will be just great,’ said Sharp. ‘Last month, I congratulated him on the arrival of his baby, and he replied with a picture of Alfred with a little cricket bat next to him and reminded me, “Two tickets are still on the gate”. Now it’s time I took him up on the offer.’
Sharp, 57, first met Root when he was a 12-year- old after Yorkshire offered him a scholarship. It was in their first one- on- one coaching session that Root asked Sharp to replicate the torrid short-ball drills he had just seen England’s Anthony McGrath partake in.
Sharp refused, wary of his adversary’s age. He said: ‘Joe smiled back with that boyish look and said, “I’ll be all right”. Of course, that got my beans going. I told him to get all his protective gear on. ‘‘For 15 minutes I am not going to be your friend,” I added. I could really throw then.’
Root proved unflappable in the face of hostility, until a bouncer clipped the grille of the helmet.
‘It rocked him back and in his distinctive South Yorkshire accent said, “Oooh, that was a good delivery, wasn’t it?” Most people don’t like fast bowling but it was almost as if he had already started preparing himself for the next level.’
That has always been the way with Root. At 16, he struggled to stand out at age-group cricket, but Sharp picked him for the second XI against Derbyshire. A debut 50 followed.
‘He just used the pace of the ball. They tried to shake him up but he loved it,’ Sharp said.
‘At that point he did not possess much physical strength, but he had the technique and a mature understanding of his game from day one. He talked about cricket like a 25-year-old. Later, before he played one-day cricket forr Yorkshire, he practised improvised shots — little reverses and dinks, so that he could use them at the first opportunity. He was a traditional- looking player but hee knew he had to adapt.
‘ He’s probably beenn thinking about this Eng- land captaincy for somee time. I think he will be a wonderful leader and itt will kick his batting on as s well because the bigger the occasion, the more he revels in it.’
Root impressed a legion n of observers during hiss days at Sheffield Collegiatete Cricket Club, King Ecgbert’s School and Worksop College and he attended the Michael Vaughan cricket school. He made the shortlist for the Sheffield school’s sports personality of the year but lost out to a girl called Jessica Ennis.
Worksop’s head of cricket Ian Parkin said: ‘He stood out right from the start. He practised with a sense of purpose, which you don’t often see with 15-year- old boys. Rooty practised like an adult.’
Not everyone was impressed, however. On a visit to Worksop, the legendary Sir Garfield Sobers advised him he would not make a first-class career with a back-foot game like his. Undoubtedly, he would have worked tirelessly to amend it.
Younger brother Billy, now on the playing staff at Nottinghamshire, rarely got a chance. He said: ‘It was always Joe saying, “I’m batting first”,’ referring to their weekends watching father Matt play in the Yorkshire League. ‘We would bang the stumps somewhere in the outfield and crack on.’
Until one day, at Scarborough, when a nine-year- old Joe overcelebrated dismissing Billy, causing the younger, bat- wielding brother to angrily pursue him. The men’s match was stopped while Matt administered a telling-off to his boys. Now their bond is forged t through admiration, as seen when Billy, as England’s 12th man in 2013, embraced h his brother upon reaching a m maiden Ashes hundred.
Root is the most popular of d dressing-room figures, too: a m mask- wearing Bob Willis impersonator, Jack the Snipper to his Yorkshire teamma mates for taking scissors to their socks, one of the lads.
With responsibility will come change, just as it did in 2012 when he and then housemate Gary Ballance were instructed to split by Yorkshire’s director of cricket Martyn Moxon if they wanted to fulfil their international ambitions. They had become too fond of takeaways and nights out in Headingley.
Ballance said: ‘ Rooty had been told he needed to move out and I was told I needed to move on as well, if we wanted to play for England. We were just young lads enjoying ourselves. We laugh about it with the coaches now because it coincided with Joe making his debut in India that November and he hasn’t looked back.’
Loyalty and fairness are inherent Root traits, while the seventh of England’s 80 Test captains to be Yorkshire-born is also immensely proud of his heritage.
Yorkshire chief executive Mark Arthur said: ‘When he plays for Yorkshire, he doesn’t see it as going back to his county. He sees it as an opportunity to represent the White Rose. That’s a fundamental aspect of his make-up. Whoever he is playing for gets everything he’s got.
‘That’s why in 2014, when Andrew Gale wasn’t able to play in the Championship- sealing match against Nottinghamshire, Rooty was asked to captain by Gale himself. He recognised natural leadership.’
It is why England are banking on Root to inspire a new era when, with mentor Sharp among a Lord’s full house, he leads the team out against South Africa.