Very good, a little bit lucky, but Joe Root alone may well not be enough to save England

JAMES COYNE AT TRENT BRIDGE: Root had already stood up alone on the first day, coping with movement and pressure way better than anyone else. Now, entering the arena with England still 49 behind, he came in and injected much needed impetus

Scorecard

Sometimes it’s better to be lucky than good, someone once said. Probably while playing a round of golf. 

Well, you’d better be both if you’re going to win Test matches against this India bowling attack. 

In this match Joe Root has been both lucky and very, very good – and even that isn’t guaranteed to be enough. 

When he won the toss and chose to bat first on a pitch with a thick topping of grass, which he requested, it exposed an out-of-practice batting line-up to the wolves, in the form of Bumrah, Shami and Siraj. 

But it was based on the premise that the third innings would be the best time to bat at Trent Bridge. And it looks like he was right about that. 

The problem was that England – Root apart – batted uncertainly first up, before India applied themselves better in similar conditions to earn a lead of 95 on first innings. This was testing his theory to quite an extreme: it meant England probably had to score 300 or more to give themselves anywhere near enough on the last day. 

It was on Friday, pretty much at the halfway point of the match, that the worm turned in Root's favour.

The ball the Indians selected for England’s second innings stubbornly refused to move. Root might well have calculated that the pitch would flatten out under a bit of sun and less rain than forecast, plus a few appointments with the heavy roller. But there was no way of him knowing the swing would disappear quite so quickly. 

^{Joe Root on his way to his 21st Test century}

Anyway, it all combined to give England the best conditions of the match to bat in – and they simply had to take advantage if they were to avoid a demoralising defeat at the start of this five-Test LV= Insurance series.  

Of course it all still depended on someone standing up to score the runs. And given the current state of England’s Test batting, it probably had to be Root himself. Yet for all his brilliance and his superb form earlier in the year, he hadn’t scored a Test century at home since the final Oval Test against India three years ago. 

Root had already stood up alone on the first day, coping with the movement and the pressure way better than anyone else. 

Now, entering the arena with England still 49 behind, he came in and injected impetus to an innings that, for all Dom Sibley’s adamantine determination, was not going anywhere desperately fast. 

While Sibley mainly looked to just keep the bowling out – 12 runs in the first hour of the day, six in the second – Root was as busy as always, picking off quick singles and gliding through the offside with elegance. Suddenly the deficit was transformed into a lead of 40 by the time Sibley’s 133-ball battle had come to an end. 

It wasn’t all serenity for Root. As he approached his second fifty of the game he started trying to late-cut as if in a one-dayer, or waft at bouncers he had no business with. The influence of T20 and The Hundred - always a doubled-edged sword - is hard to completely shed. He was a bit lucky not to feather one. 

And then, suddenly, another shift. Grey clouds swept in to replace white ones, and the lights flickered on just before 2pm. Suddenly the ball began darting about like it hadn’t since the first day. 

Sibley was unlucky in that regard, to receive a devilish nip-backer from Jasprit Bumrah, though it’s not as if he has ever been a master of the booming cover drive. Rishabh Pant took a superb sprawling catch off the inside edge, the kind he might not even have got a finger to in the series three years ago. 

Next over, Mohammed Siraj had the ball nipping back too. So Root throttled back and let his mate from Yorkshire, Jonny Bairstow, take the initiative for a while. It was a masterful exposition of knowing how to change tempo depending on the match context. You simply cannot imagine anyone else in the England side, save the absent Ben Stokes, and perhaps Jos Buttler at the height of his game, being able to do that. 

^{Root is congratulated by Sam Curran after reaching three figures}

The game was wonderfully tense as Root approached his hundred. He spent 12 balls on 97, and survived three appeals, two where he was just outside the line, and one where Virat Kohli was trying it on down the legside a la Viv Richards against Rob Bailey in the West Indies in 1989/90.

Root almost picked out cover off the back foot in his eagerness to reach the hundred. But he got there with a beautiful on-drive – and a huge release of pent-up emotion followed. 

It was a sublime innings not so much for the assuredness – but for all the background issues which Root has been dragged into by dint of his position as England captain. When you hear Mike Atherton on Sky describe it as “a privilege to be describing” the cricket when Root achieved his 21st Test century, you get a sense of how special a performance it was. 

He is carrying the batting to such a degree that the next-highest scorer for England’s Test team this calendar year is Dan Lawrence, who is destined to be dropped if any rebalancing takes place for the second Test at Lord’s. 

As expected, the second new ball in the hands of Bumrah under lights was simply too good for all of them – even Root, who edged behind for 109 off 172 balls. The last four wickets fell for 29, though there was the amusing case of a no-ball given for three fielders behind square on the legside, the Indians seemingly distracted by getting into it again with James Anderson as he walked out to bat. 

England did make that 300, by the way – nudging their way up to 303, leaving India a ticklish 209 to win. 

So, as Root intended, it was India who were tasked with batting last, albeit against a side without a frontline spinner. 

Did Root know what he was doing all along? We’ll find out sometime tomorrow. Oh, but you might have to do a bit of bowling yourself too, Joe. 

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