Joe Root is as good as any England batsman – but needs one more thing to be greatest

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When Joe Root carved a cricket ball through the offside at Lord’s to reach his 34th Test century, the man whose record he had beaten – Sir Alastair Cook – led the tumultuous applause from the commentary box by saluting Root as “England’s greatest”.

And numerous are the superlatives which Root has earned in his 33 years, sufficient to make him in only a matter of time “Sir Joseph”. For a statistical start, in addition to this national record, he has scored more Test centuries (seven) and more Test runs (2022) than anybody else at Lord’s in the course of his 40 innings: “ground records” worth having.

Nobody in our lifetime has personified the best of English Test batsmanship as Root has done in all its orthodoxies, like his high leading elbow, his balance, the straightness of his bat, and the balletic footwork that enables him to play right forward or right back and master spin bowling in Asia – all the orthodoxies at least since the re-setting last winter in India after he had brought England’s house crashing down by essaying a reverse-ramp in Rajkot.

Subsequently, the imp has re-emerged several times but, crucially, when the game has been in the bag, not the balance. In his 12 Test innings since Rajkot, older and wiser, no longer striving to be what he is not – to become Kevin Pietersen as well as Joe Root – and now fulfilling his talents, he has scored four hundreds, four fifties, and averaged 88. Don Bradman scored 24 per cent of Australia’s runs during his career, and George Headley 21 per cent of West Indies; Root, since his self-realisation on the road from Rajkot to Damascus, has scored 23 per cent of England’s.

Ego-free team player

Root, in addition, has been the ultimate team man. Ego? Or flaunting, under Ben Stokes’s nose, his status as England’s senior pro and the man who has captained England most in Tests? Before the acclamation had fallen silent, he was resuming his stance and facing up to the Sri Lankan fast bowler Lahiru Kumara to score more runs for his team. Anybody else would have milked it.

In the evening session, too, instead of wallowing in self-congratulation, Root switched his concentration to the demands of first slip and held two catches in the fading light, before responding to his captain’s need for a second spinner.

Root has also been – for what it is worth, which is immensely much – as fine a human being, as decent a spud, to have represented England. In 2018, when England’s Test and one-day sides coincided in Colombo, their captains (Root and Eoin Morgan) launched a code by which the national cricket team have more or less abided, enshrining courage, respect and unity.

But, while Cook passed his generous judgment amidst the euphoria of this historic moment, a more objective assessment would be that Root, as yet, should be recognised as equal-best – however that may be defined – among all of England’s Test batsmen through the ages.

Root’s challengers for this title can be limited to a handful, and a couple of those discounted on closer inspection. WG Grace did not play a Test until he was 32, partly because Tests were not invented until 1877 and partly because the fee for touring Australia was insufficient for his appetites. Sir Leonard Hutton would be another candidate but for the Second World War and the left-arm accident which restricted his movements, when he was averaging 67.

Hall of fame contenders

If apples can be compared with pears, and openers with middle-order batsmen, Cook himself is another contender; but nobody, least of all the “parfit gentil knight” himself, would compare his range of stroke to Root’s (Cook reckoned he had three), and that has to be a criterion.

This leaves, in the hall of fame, Sir Jack Hobbs, Wally Hammond and Pietersen. Hobbs is still unrivalled in that he scored 12 Ashes centuries, though none a double. By the same Ashes yardstick, which remains the most important, Hammond veered from the most runs in a series by an England batsman in Australia (905, even more than Cook’s 766) to a shocker in England when he averaged 20.

While Pietersen has tended to polarise opinions, it should always be recognised that while he was never great in consistency, needing his spirit to be moved, he would play great innings — innings beyond the scope not only of his contemporaries but of the cricketing imagination at that time.

Root has one advantage over them all, in that he is still playing, and in 15 months can rectify the one lacuna in his record: no Test hundred in Australia in all of 27 innings to date. Accomplish that, as part of an Ashes-winning team, and then Root can and should be acclaimed as England’s greatest batsman.