Opinion
Isn’t it a thing of beauty to watch a sportsman at the peak of their powers?
Canelo Alvarez ending 2021 as the unified 168-pound boxing champion and Charles Oliveira as the current UFC lightweight champion of the world are just a few individuals that come to mind straight away.
In professional sports, to be the cream above the crop is a temporary state and level that few humans ever reach.
Watching Joe Root in his superb batting form during the calendar year of 2021 easily fits into this category of sportsmen possessed by something greater than them.
During the second innings at the Gabba, Root made 89 runs in an England loss. Although he did not make that sacred Australian Ashes hundred, he made batting look simple and smooth.
From all the external pressures of England’s record in Australia, the squad, the quarantine bubble life, captaincy criticisms and selection debacles of the first Test, here was England’s captain standing tall and being the best in the world at what he does.
(Photo by Albert Perez – CA/Cricket Australia via Getty Images)
In the time of initially writing this piece, I was watching his innings at the MCG on Day 1. He was batting on 31 off 56 balls, on a pitch that had bounce and a bit of spice, and was giving the bowling team opportune moments.
He only ended up making a 50 in that innings and the crumbling of English cricket after that three-day Test is now already in folklore. Although I haven’t researched his control percentage in that innings, he barely seemed to put a foot wrong.
When a batsman is in an elevated zone of performance, the control they exhibit with every defensive and offensive shot is immaculate. Every ball is played with a decisive movement forward or back and there is no half-heartedness in any action.
It is an excellent indicator of how clear Root’s head must be when facing up to deliveries. I guess that is how you can walk into press conferences saying you’re confident you can bang out a hundred in the next couple of Tests.
Root’s set-up has always been good to the eye, standing tall with a back-and-across trigger movement and then lurching forward to get closer to the ball. These are aspects he worked on after his first tour to Australia, where his batting set-up lacked the wonderful forward flourish he shows now.
Root’s most pleasant shots to the eye are his front-foot and back-foot cover drives. His front-foot drives aren’t always intended for boundaries but it is a shot that brings him plenty of singles. The commitment into the movement is the key part of the stroke that is attractive.
His back-foot shots along cover and point are more for the technical enthusiasts out there, where his left shoulder stays beautifully aligned while he is on his toes playing the shot.
(Photo by Darrian Traynor – CA/Cricket Australia via Getty Images)
I remember a time when it was first raised that this is a shot that could leave Root fallible when Pakistan toured England in 2016, when England already knew they’d found their greatest batter in the last two generations. This was when Wahab Riaz was still in the Pakistani Test team.
The other aspect of batsmanship that seems easy to the eye for Root this year is his running between the wickets and the single-pinching shots.
His nudges to third man and gully, although making him greedy at times and leading to his dismissals, have always been a hallmark of Root the batter, but it seemed more prominent during 2021.
Another player who had wonderful control of nudges behind the wicket was Mohammad Yousuf, who coincidentally leads the list of leading run scorers in a calendar year (Root is now third).
After such a mammoth year, we almost forget that Root was struggling there for a bit. He struggled with conversions after 50s (not just in Australia), his run-scoring consistency seemed to wane a bit, and his Test average dropped below 50.
For a larger context, a Test batting average is not a great indicator of a batter’s talent but a fall below 50 for a player who has remained there for a few years showed a loss of some vital cog in Root’s batting where things were not in sync. Similar things can be said for Virat Kohli at the moment.
During this time, Root’s captaincy was debated as taking a toll on his batting, with the seniors such as Alastair Cook leaving a hole in the batting line-up and putting extra burden on the value of Root’s runs.
(Photo by Chris Hyde/Getty Images)
This situation has unbelievably only got worse with the ECB just watching on as their batter has become the laughing stock of cricket.
The team’s woes makes Root’s prolific year of 1708 runs more special. The next highest run getter for England in the same time is Rory Burns with 530 runs. Talk about carrying the team on your shoulders, Joe Root in 2021 is the literal definition of it.
It is one thing for champion players to produce runs in a winning environment. Think Ricky Ponting in all the years he scored heavily in an already great batting line-up.
But for a player to rise above the mediocre baseline that has been created by the team is a momentous effort. It speaks of true grit, determination, focus and the strength to rise up above the mental cloud and doubt others inflict on you.
Even during the Ashes series currently, Root has had to deal with a lot of distractions as the English captain. Whereas in the past it seemed to drain him, now it clearly motivates him.
(Photo by Mark Brake – CA/Cricket Australia via Getty Images)
It shows his ability to switch off everything else in the outside world when he is at the batting crease, where every ball becomes his only focus. It will be interesting to know if Root got any mental training to get his head in the right gear.
After years of it being said he is not the right kind of leader for the team, he would have waited for an opportunity to prove his critics wrong by leading from example with the bat.
And to a point, he has. He has shown he can handle responsibility, while still scoring heavily.
However, one cannot think his captaincy will be in doubt after this Ashes series, but that’s a separate topic of discussion.
It is unlikely that Joe Root or many other current batsmen will have another calendar year as such for quite a while. These kinds of feats are rare.
So when these moments do arrive, you have to appreciate it and I am glad I have got to witness some Joe Root innings in his miraculous year.
The fact that he has stood taller than anyone else in a sinking ship is a testament to his character and his commitment to English cricket.
Let’s hope we see a few more good years from him. And a Joe Root hundred in Australia will be good to see, seeing that we’ve already retained the Ashes.
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