root’s century is one for the ages
From 76 for four, Root then produced exactly what he was made for – a captain’s innings he was born to play
Not that Joe Root needed anything to sharpen his focus more keenly when he started his first walk to the wicket as England’s new Test skipper, but if he was able or inclined to take in the scenery on his journey from the England dressing room to the middle at Lord’s, the sights he encountered would have emphasised there is simply no escape from the magnitude of the deal he has signed up for.
Hovering above the beginning of the three-minute walk, Denis Compton looks down and nods “best of luck, ol’ boy”.
Wally Hammond seems stern but sympathetic as you pass him on your left, Mike Atherton and Alec Stewart remind you this is serious business, Sir Ian Botham seems to have his mind on other things, mainly the fat cigar in his hand.
And if the 26-year-old former ‘Milky Bar Kid’ hadn’t got the message by now that he was walking through history, further portraits of Graham Gooch, Colin Cowdrey, Andrew Strauss and a cast of 1980s England stars in profile, with Mike Brearley at its foreground, make sure he had now.
Root has trod this path many times before. In fact, he has been at home here ever since, in a rain break during the National Club Cricket Final in which his dad was playing for Sheffield Collegiate, he and his brother Billy were shooed off the outfield by a steward as they attempted to hammer a stump into the ground for a knockabout.
That scruffy kid in short pants went on to make his first hundred against Australia here (180 in 2013) and his first double-century (200 not out versus Sri Lanka in 2014) and has risen to most other occasions too. But yesterday was different, because yesterday he was coming out to bat as England’s 80th Test captain.
Up to that point he had handled every experience the day had thrown at him with his customary humility and humour. Autographs had been signed, smiles exchanged with the man on the MCC pavilion door as he entered, obligatory pint of coffee in hand, and he nearly walked into a member coming the other way.
Even with a streaming cold, he had remembered to take with him his own £1 coin with which to toss up, because, as he explained afterwards: “I didn’t realise they provided one for you and I didn’t want to come across as a tight Yorkshireman.”
He spun it successfully too, as, after his opposite number and fellow first-time skipper Dean Elgar called tails, it came down heads.
Most importantly of all, as advised in advance by Sky’s army of ex-captains including David Gower, Sir Ian, Atherton and Nasser Hussain, he avoided the temptation the last of that quartet failed to resist, of sticking the opposing side in to bat on the first day of a series and allowing them the chance to bat your side out of it.
And if Root did need one last push to get himself out into the heat of battle, the presence on the pavilion walls of Michael Vaughan, Raymond Illingworth, Len Hutton and Lord Hawke would have done the tenth Yorkshireman to lead his country’s cricketers no harm at all.
How he bounded out to join them on that list, through the pavilion gates like a ball out of a cannon, practising a couple of forward pushes under the all-seeing eye of spidercam to a slightly more reverential than usual chorus of “ROOOOOT” (or were the crowd simply more nervous than he was?) and looking rather more enthusiastic about what faced him than a score of 17 for two in the sixth over might suggest he should.
Granted, he probably should not have been out there quite so early as 11.26am, as while his predecessor Alastair Cook was out fair and square, Keaton Jennings would have survived Vernon Philander’s lbw shout had the latest to try and open the batting with him bothered to review it. On another day, the first innings of this new England captain might have been over before it really got going.
After an inside edge allowed him to get off the mark from his first delivery, he played and missed at his next, from Kagisa Rabada, then, in what looked like desperation, slashed at his next but got enough of the ball to launch it to the third-man boundary.
He should have gone without addition when, at 35 for two, he hooked Rabada straight to where substitute fielder Aiden Markram would have caught it on the deep backward square boundary had the young man not wandered in to allow it to sail over his head. And JP Duminy might have caught him on 16 off the same bowler.
But from 76 for four, in first a century stand with Ben Stokes and then 150 with Moeen Ali, Root produced what he was made for – a captain’s innings he was born to play. Whoever doubted he would? Not his illustrious predecessors on the pavilion walls, who, as he walked back past them to the dressing room last night, would surely have been offering silent and timeless approval.