Surrey give Root food for thought
Joe Root, as Yorkshire’s captain, will be saddened that his decision to send the home team in will culminate in Surrey’s first Championship victory over the White Rose county for 17 years.
Following on, Yorkshire are 43 runs behind with only five wickets left and the Oval pitch is turning as in the days of Tony Lock and Jim Laker.
As England’s captain, however, Root will be happy that Yorkshire’s downfall has been orchestrated by so many promising Surrey youngsters.
As England’s Test resources stand ahead of the squad being announced tomorrow afternoon, they are scant, but if Root – now aged 27 – can hang on as his country’s captain for four more years, mid-table mediocrity might grow into something more golden.
Root has been dismissed by two 19-year-old bowlers in this match. Both of them are members of species widely assumed to be extinct in England, one left-handed, the other a spinner – and they were cashing in on 20-year-old Ollie Pope’s unbeaten and unflappable 158, made when the pitch had been grassy and bouncy on day one.
In his first innings Root fell as so often last winter, looking to score too soon in his innings, and too square, instead of defending straight.
Sam Curran went on to take six wickets in Yorkshire’s first innings, moving the ball both ways, but his zenith came in their second when he swung a yorker into Cheteshwar Pujara, who averages more than 50 for India, and removed the middle stump. Curran was awarded his cap as he came off the field at lunch, the third youngest for Surrey, unless you believe that Waqar Younis was really 19 when he bowled like lightning in 1991 (Vivian Crawford and Donald Knight were younger than Curran).
Curran’s pace is little above 80mph, but that does not matter if he can keep swinging it and develop a threatening bouncer that drives the batsman back before using the one that is pitched up.
When Yorkshire followed on 185 behind, in spite of Jonny Bairstow’s 95 off 94 balls, Root was bowled through the gate by a chubby teenager with a beard and dark glasses. And thank goodness for the Vauxhall stand because Amar Virdi, in celebration, charged towards point, on to the third-man boundary and would have sprinted into Vauxhall station and ended up on the Victoria line.
Virdi resembles Harbhajan Singh but bowls his off-spin sideways on. He had Adam Lyth caught at slip and would have taken two more wickets if Ben Foakes had not missed stumping Harry Brook and Jack Leaning, the first hard, the second regulation.
Bairstow hit seven of his first 15 balls of the day to the boundary, as if to ridicule the idea that Foakes should replace him as England’s Test keeper-batsman. The only piece of England’s batting that is not broken or does not need fixing is Bairstow’s and, while Foakes looks more polished as a keeper, Bairstow did not miss a chance last winter.