Why batting second puts Root’s team on back foot

Meet England’s two Test sides. The first win twice as many Tests as they lose, including coming out on top in their past five Tests. The second are more like a 1990s redux, collapsing haphazardly and not even mustering a win every three Tests.

Both these sides are captained by Joe Root. The difference between them is not whether Ben Stokes plays, how many bowlers are picked or where Root bats. It is simply whether England bat first.

Under the three years of Root’s captaincy, there has been no better gauge of England’s success. Batting first, England have won 18 of their 29 Tests, losing nine. Batting second, England have won just four out of 14 Tests, losing seven.

As Pakistan claimed a firstinnings lead of 107 at Emirates Old Trafford, it threatened to extend this unwelcome record. That would, at least, bring neat symmetry: from winning two Tests for every one they lose when batting first, Root’s England would also be losing two Tests for every one they win batting second.

For a team batting first against England, any score that achieves basic competence has doubled as the prelude to Test-match victory. Root’s England have conceded 200 in the first innings of the Test on nine previous occasions. They have lost seven and drawn two. While scoring 350 against Eoin Morgan’s one-day side leaves England nonplussed, scoring 250 against Root’s Test side leaves England disorientated.

England’s only victories bowling first under Root have come after spectacular first-innings collapses by their opponents: 123, 174, 107 and 179. Faced with seemingly middle totals, England have subsided: after India’s 329 at Nottingham and the West Indies’s 289 in Barbados, England lost 10 and then nine wickets in a solitary session.

At Centurion last winter, Root inserted South Africa on a spicy pitch. Ordinarily, South Africa’s 284 would have been a par score; against England it set-up a 103-run first-innings lead and an emphatic victory. Wisely, Root has not dared insert anyone since.

When England bat second, their batting has disintegrated like a china vase hit by a train. In the Root era, England’s average total in the first innings of a match is 312; their average first innings falls to just 267 when batting second.

England’s top order may lend itself better to setting up a Test rather than responding to a contest that has already taken shape, and dwindling run-production from England’s tail has made turning around struggling positions more arduous.

But England’s greatest problem has been how batting second impedes their multiskilled players. Their Test team in recent years has

been characterised by the number of all-round cricketers – either wicketkeepers or all-rounders – batting in the top seven, as Ben Stokes, Jos Buttler, Moeen Ali and Jonny Bairstow have done.

All fare far worse in the second innings of the match than the first.

Stokes averages 50 in the first innings of the match, but just 22 in England’s first innings when they bat second.

Buttler’s first-innings average slips from 37 to 24; Moeen’s tumbles from 44 to 18; and Bairstow’s from 51 to 26. England hope that moving on from so many all-rounders will produce a more consistent, resilient side.

Yet England’s split personalities batting first and second are merely

0 Matches England have won under Joe Root when conceding 200+ in the first innings. They have lost seven and drawn two.

an extreme example of a global trend. A golden age of Test bowling worldwide does not allow batsmen any respite. Since 2017, the 11 other

Test teams have won 58 per cent of Tests batting first and only 32 per cent bowling first.

The upshot is that one of cricket’s famous dictums – “If you win the toss, nine times out of 10 you should bat; on the 10th occasion you should think about bowling and then bat” – has ceased to be dreadful advice. From 1980-2010, 52 more Tests were won by sides batting second.

Now, with bowlers ascendant and batting getting harder as matches progress – before, the second innings of the game was the highest scoring – teams need an exceptional reason to defy the dictum.

This all means that the toss has become newly critical. From 1990 to 2010, teams who won the toss lost more games than they won. Since 2010, as batting first has come to offer a palpable edge, toss winners have won four Tests for every three they have lost.

In the last two Tests against the West Indies, Jason Holder’s mistake was to neglect how much this England side depend upon whether they bat first. Only one of England’s past 14 Test-match victories – the miracle of Headingley – has come batting second. Other captains, you suspect, will be less generous.

If England are to return to world No1, they must become not just a side who can set up games – but who can fight back when behind. For all the despair about their first innings, the remainder of this Test gives them a chance to do as much.