Can Joe Root beat the records to become Yorkshire’s best ever batsman?
Joe Root is just 30 and next week he will play his hundredth Test. He is the fourth of Yorkshire’s indisputably great batsmen; the previous three being Herbert Sutcliffe (54 Tests), Len Hutton (79 Tests) and Geoffrey Boycott (108 Tests).
Sutcliffe’s career was delayed by the First World War – he was twenty when it broke out; Hutton’s was interrupted by the Second World War – he was twenty-three in 1939; Boycott was twenty-four when first capped, forty-one when he played his last Test. Root, barring injury, will play 17 Tests this calendar year. The earlier three all made many more centuries for Yorkshire than for England. Root scarcely ever plays a first-class match for the county. He has now scored more Test runs than any of the other three and, for Test hundreds, has surpassed Sutcliffe’s 16, levelled with Hutton’s 19 and is set to continue past Boycott’s 22 this year.
The game and the cricket calendar have changed so much that comparisons between the four are worth little. It is not only that the balance between Test and county cricket is so different, but the game on the field has also changed too, even if it may be argued that there is little in cricket today which wasn’t in it a hundred years ago. Certainly, some shots are played now that Sutcliffe, Hutton and Boycott could scarcely have imagined. I don’t suppose that any of them ever thought of the reverse sweep which Root played with such success in the two Tests against Sri Lanka this month. Conversely covering of pitches means that Root has never batted on a sticky wicket.
Comparing bowlers from different times is likewise a case of not comparing like with like. I have seen two great Lancashire fast or fast-medium bowlers: Brian Statham and James Anderson. Anderson has played many more Tests than county matches for Lancashire, Statham the reverse. Anderson has taken 608 Test wickets, with more to come; Statham took 252 at a slightly lower average. On the other hand, in first-class matches Statham took more than 2000 wickets, Anderson is a bit short of 1000; absurd to my mind to judge one better than the other.
It’s only in one respect that the marginalising of county cricket is handicapping English cricket. It was remarked several times during the Sri Lanka Tests that England’s two spinners, Jack Leach and Dom Bess, were still inexperienced, very much so in the case of Bess, less so in Leach’s. Both, therefore, are still learning their trade, developing their craft, and being required to do this at the highest level of the game. All things considered, they did pretty well in Sri Lanka. India will set them a stiffer exam.
People are often too critical. It was remarked that Bess took 5 wickets in Sri Lanka’s first innings of the first Test without bowling particularly well. This was true enough; there will be days when he bowls better and finishes with 0 for plenty. So what? It’s not always the good balls that get a batsman out. Derek Underwood (297 Test wickets) remarked that it’s not always your best balls that take a wicket, sometimes not even particularly good ones that do. Lots of times a batsman is out because he has made a mistake. Sometimes if he has been tied down, his ability to score restricted, the apparent gift of a full toss or long-hop will produce a rash stroke – out caught in the deep.
This series in India promises to be fascinating. It offers as tough a challenge as an Ashes series in Australia. India haven’t lost a series at home since 2012. England will be fielding a top order short, except for Root and Stokes, of experience in Test cricket, let alone Test cricket in India. Root has made more Test hundreds than the rest of his team put together, and, while his batting in Sri Lanka was sublime, one just hopes he hasn’t peaked too soon or used up whatever aggregate of runs the cricketing gods have allotted him for 2021. Others will certainly have to contribute more to the total than they did in the two Tests at Galle if England are going to make the sort of first innings score that settles them comfortably in the match. One has the uneasy feeling that too much depends on Root.
Yet the same may be said of India and their captain Virat Kohli, even if they won the just-finished series in Australia without him. There may be more ballast in the Indian top order than in England’s, but it has its moments of fragility too.
With home advantage, the odds are firmly in India’s favour. Nevertheless, it promises to be fascinating. Alarm clocks set for the first ball at 4 a.m. GMT on Friday for – one hopes -uninterrupted Covid-free coverage. And, perhaps, a century for Joe Root which will take him past the Maestro Len Hutton’s 19 Test hundreds in a very different era and, as one who as a schoolboy worshipped Len must remark, in many fewer matches.