ROOT HITS BACK
Ton-up Joe tames India to force a showdown
A BUSY century from Joe Root, an improved display against the he spin of Kuldeep Yadav, and a crush- rushing win to set up a decider in Leeds on Tuesday. For Eng- gland, the second one-dayer r against India at Lord’s ticked more boxes than they could have hoped for.
Just as crucially, the result — victory by 86 runs — questioned the narrative e which has India’s slow bowl- lers and master batsmen out- utclassing their hosts in a summer mer of blue skies and parched pitches. tches. Yes, England could do with h rain. But if they can beat India on n a sur- sur face such as this — slow, low and dry — then all is not lost.
Credit to Eoin Morgan, who defied the consensus among ex-pros in the commentary box by choosing to bat — despite India already making mincemeat of three chases.
But the England skipper realised what wasn’t evident in the eyrie: the pitch was only going to become more turgid. So it was that, as India chased 323 — imposing, but not impossible — they couldn’t make headway against the spin of Moeen Ali and Adil Rashid.
Moeen whistled through 10 overs for 42, trapping Virat Kohli en route for 45. And Rashid picked up two for 38, fooling Suresh Raina with his googly and having Umesh Yadav stumped second ball.
MS Dhoni hung around, but with little sense of purpose, bringing boos from the crowd, even as he went past 10,000 ODI runs. An innings of 37 from 59 balls will not feature in the memoirs. The kindest that could be said was that it felt like a net for Leeds.
The key lines had already been delivered during an England innings built on Root’s superb 113 from 116 balls. He was industrious rather than destructive, but he read the conditions to aT— and he needed his runs as much as England did.
He had averaged just 14 in his previous eight white-ball innings, and lost his place in the Twenty20 team. His hundred felt like an arm around the shoulder, especially ahead of a l andmark five- Test series, when his every cough and splutter will be compared with Kohli.
‘I was desperate to contribute to us winning games of cricket,’ Root said. ‘Today was an opportunity to do that and I managed to pull through.’
He was particularly smart against Kuldeep, who began the game having dismissed him twice in three balls. Instead, Root milked his leftarm wrist-spin for 33 runs off 29 balls.
‘I felt like the balls I had already faced from him I was picking him OK,’ he said with a smile. ‘It was more about spending time out there.’
This was high-class batting — and it had two important by-products. First, it ensured Root didn’t add another dispiriting notch in his column of unconverted half-centuries: this was only the second time out of 18 that he had turned a fifty into three figures. He now has 12 ODI hundreds, equalling Marcus Trescothick’s national record.
Second, it helped demythologise Kuldeep, just as India are on the brink of including him in their Test squad. Kuldeep took another three wickets, it’s true, lifting his tally in four white-ball games to 14. But all three owed something to fortune: Jonny Bairstow was bowled round his legs via pad and glove; Jason Roy’s exocet sweep picked out the only man on the leg-side boundary; and Morgan hoicked a full toss to deep midwicket.
Just as crucially, Kuldeep went for 68 runs — 43 more than he conceded while picking up six at Trent Bridge on Thursday. England might easily have been spooked after his second ball accounted for Bairstow, but held their nerve. Over the course of a long summer, these mini-battles matter.
Two other innings stood out after Bairstow and Roy had given Engl a nd a not her f l yer. Morgan’s resourceful 53 was part of a thirdwicket stand of 103 with Root, while David Willey’s unbeaten 50 from 31 balls — his first international halfcentury — was a late dose of adrenaline.
At 239 for six in the 42nd over, after failures for Ben Stokes, Jos Buttler and Moeen, England were in danger of falling short, as in Nottingham. But Willey took 17 off an over from Siddharth Kaul and allowed Root to move serenely to three figures.
India began brightly in reply, but three wickets in 16 balls stalled t hem. Mark Wood’s off- cutter defeated Rohit Sharma’s ugly heave, Shikhar Dhawan skewed Willey to backward point, and Buttler held a brilliant leg-side catch to dismiss KL Rahul off Liam Plunkett, who returned later to mop things up.
In between, the spinners strangled the life out of India’s chase. Funny how quickly things change.