Culture Society, Identity and Belonging
Joe Root has scored his 34th Test match century for England. He passed the record of Alastair Cook when he scored his second century of the match against Sri Lanka at Lord’s. He’s way ahead of such sainted names as Hammond, Hutton, Cowdrey, Boycott and Barrington and has a strong claim to be the best England batter of all time. And he’s mostly done it all with a light touch, an air of enjoyment rather than bitter struggle. He smiles a lot, often at wholly unexpected moments, as if it was all rather a lark. Like all sports, cricket is a triviality performed as if it were a life-and-death matter – but the life-and-death idea seems never to have occurred to Root. Perhaps that explains his strength and longevity.
A century is an individual record, but it’s (usually) still about team: either a major contribution to victory or a hideous problem for ultimately victorious opponents. In any batter’s career, it’s by their centuries that you know them. The performances that won matches.
Odd, then, to recall that for some years Root’s weakness was his conversion rate: his nagging failure to move from 50 to 100. He played brilliant cameos when he might have seized control of time and place, as he often does now.
He overcame that flaw, and is now seen as a specialist in centuries: a player for the long-haul. He has scored 200 or more five times in Test cricket. He comes out to bat, apparently does very little but he’s already 20 runs to the good and about to accelerate. He scores wittily off good balls and hits seraphic boundaries off bad ones. Knowing the difference between them at the moment of release is – with his perky temperament – his greatest strength.
Test match cricket is dying. The shorter forms, based on a slavish need to entertain, now dominate. We all have our favourite hit singles, but mostly accept that symphonies have more bottom. Root’s achievements in Test matches over 13 years remind us that cricket’s longest form has a depth of meaning that T20 can’t aspire to.
Root is now joint sixth on the list of all-time Test century makers: ahead of him are Rahul Dravid on 36, Kumar Sangakkara 38, Ricky Ponting 41, Jacques Kallis 45 and Sachin Tendulkar 51. Root is 33 years old: Tendulkar retired a month before his 39th birthday.
