ROOT MASTER
How facing an Aussie fast bowler at the age of 12 has helped shape a batting hero who’s on his way to becoming England’s next Hutton
GORDON HALL has two signatures on a page in his autograph book that he cherishes above all others. The first is that of Yorkshire and England’s greatest batsman, Len Hutton. The other belongs to Joe Root.
Hall, the president of Sheffield Collegiate CC, now in his mid-80s but still as sharp as a tack with a sense of humour to match, has watched all the great Yorkshire batsmen since the second World War; several of them, including Hutton, on the club’s Abbeydale Park ground on the city’s southern fringe.
Root learned his cricket there, as did his father, Matt, and his former team-mate Michael Vaughan. And, five days after watching England’s latest master craftsman record his highest Test score of 254 against Pakistan at Old Trafford, Hall feels comparisons with Hutton are worthy.
‘I’ve got Len Hutton and Joe’s autograph on the same page. It seems appropriate,’ he said. ‘I watched a lot of Len bat and Joe is very close to him indeed.
‘Confidence is the main thing with Joe. It just comes out in his batting. He’s always been that way. Len could not have played the shot Joe played to get his 200 in Manchester. My word what a shot. A reverse sweep through backward point? Len had never even heard of it.’
Confidence is a word which crops up time and again when discussing Root and his rise to the very top of the world game. Confidence and humility.
It is that confidence which enabled a 21year-old Root to stand in front of one of the most established dressing rooms in English cricket history before making his Test debut in Nagpur in 2012 and tell the likes of Kevin Pietersen, Jonathan Trott and Alastair Cook — childhood heroes all — how England should win the series.
Last week, after seeing him bounce back from twice getting himself out when well set in the first Test defeat at Lord’s to record the third highest innings by an England No3, team-mate Stuart Broad said he ranked Root above any other shot-maker he had played with, including Pietersen.
‘They’re two extremely nice compliments from two people I respect,’ said Root. ‘Gordon has watched a lot of cricket over the years and Stuart has played with some fantastic players. It’s very humbling.
‘It’s about scoring runs isn’t it? I’m fortunate to play with England’s best-ever run maker in Alastair Cook and watch how he goes about it. There are definitely parts of his game that I can add to mine.
‘If you want to be one of the best you can’t keep making the same mistakes or flutter in and out of form too frequently. My goal is to be really consistent and keep making big, big scores. It’s nice to have that confidence and satisfaction and feeling within that I can bat for that long period of time. Hopefully, it’s something I repeat again and again.’
Root revealed last week a conversation with England batting coach Mark Ramprakash refocused his mind and helped eradicate the loose shots that had seen him dismissed 17 times between the 48th and 99th overs in the past two years, while scoring five hundreds in the process. But he did not reveal a conversation he had with his younger brother Billy — a talented cricketer on Nottinghamshire’s books — going into the second Test England won by 330 runs to level the Investec Series. Billy, 23, said: ‘I was with Joe on Monday night before the Test and he said: “Billy, I’m going to get a hundred this week”. I said: “Yeah right”. He stopped me and said: “No, I promise you I’m going to get a hundred this week’’.’
Root shies away from making bold public statements and is uncomfortable being compared to the greatest players 44 Tests into what should be a great career, but his self-belief has always been evident.
When he opened the batting for Sheffield Collegiate’s second XI as a 5ft-tall 12-year- old boy — a promotion dad Matt is convinced enabled him to master back-foot play as he was forced to learn the art of standing tall over the rising ball — he earned the respect of Victoria fast bowler Marc Carson, who was playing as an overseas professional for Treeton in the South Yorkshire League at the time.
‘He was a small lad until he was about 17,’ said Root’s father. ‘It’s why he’s so good off the back foot. Playing men’s cricket when
he relativelywas so short small, so he got used to playing off his back foot.
‘There was no chance of anyone going easy on him because he was young lad. I remember playing at Treeton and they had an Australian overseas player who was really quick. Everyone thought he was quick. Joe was 12 and only made four or five. But he played him really well, got in line and stood his ground. I can remember
the bowler came into the dressing room to congratulate Joe on facing up to him.’
Teenager Root would regularly be found batting as darkness fell, along with Billy and team-mates Ben Fielding, Josh Varley and others who were honing their skills late into long summer evenings.
When he was 15, Root sketched a picture of a cricket stadium and wrote ‘today was the day I realised I’d become a world-class cricketer’. He still has that piece of paper.
‘Some days we’d play “when you’re out you’re out” and Joe would always say “I’ll stick them on first” and then bat until 3 o’clock or until he decided he’d need a rest,’ said Fielding, a 25-year-old left-arm spinner in Collegiate’s first XI.
‘He just had this hunger to keep batting all the time. The focus he had even from a young age was incredible.
‘He’d would mess around on the edges but when he went into bat he’d flick a switch and the focus was just incredible. He’d be almost a completely different bloke and would go into a zone or a bubble. Technically he was always very good but it’s his mental strength and desire that’s probably got him to where he now.’ With 3,875 runs in 44 Tests including 10 tons at an average of 56.15, Root sits squarely between Hutton and Denis Compton in the all-time list of English batsman with more than 1,000 Test runs.
Yet not everything has gone his way since his debut four years ago. He suffered at the hands of Mitchell Johnson and Ryan Harris in Australia and was dropped.
And there was a notorious incident which saw Aussie David Warner punch him in a nightclub in 2013. That was a valuable lesson and he became ‘more boring’.
‘I like to think I get the balance right now,’ said Root. ‘Potentially I went a bit far then. Even though I didn’t feel I actually did anything wrong, the fact I was there at that time was not how an England cricketer should conduct himself. You want to be on the back pages, not the front.’
He will hope to dominate those pages for many years to come. His next opportunity is this week against Pakistan in the third Test at Edgbaston, starting on Wednesday.
Joe Root was speaking at his first club, Sheffield Collegiate CC, on behalf of Hardys Wine & their Heartbeat of the Club campaign. Find out more on Twitter @HardysWineUK.