A Match Made in Heaven

The Bazball wave is here to stay, despite England’s recent hammering by India in their away tour to the subcontinent, the first series defeat for England Test Cricket since Stokes took over captaincy reins from Joe Root.

There are a few reasons why this uber-aggressive approach won’t change. The most fundamental of these is the fact that both Stokes and McCullum are very aware of the fact that this risky road will inevitably cause some downfalls. However, both the coach and the captain seem unfazed and still seem to be pushing for the win every chance they get. And to their credit, they have played inspiring and confident cricket, reflected in their table-turning performances over the past 2 years.  

At the centre of these game-changing performances has been former captain and the best English batsman, Joe Root. Since he has given up captaincy, he has improved his performance even further and has taken to Bazball like a fish to water.

Before diving into Root in the post-Bazball era, it is important to understand the state of the team during the end of Root’s captaincy. Criticism of English Test Cricket was high during his tenure and towards the end, with the Ashes 2022 beatdown, things needed to change. In his last 20 tests as the English Captain, Root won only 4 games while losing 11 and drawing 5. However, judging Root’s leadership based solely on the results from these games would be unfair. During this period, English Cricket Management was experimenting with player rest and rotation along with Covid-19. The experiment failed for the most part as continuously changing the 11 didn’t allow the team to settle. Morever, it also meant that Root rarely had his best 11 on the field, even in crucial test matches.

However, the greatest counterargument in defence of his tenure would be the performance of the player himself. Since the beginning of the Sri Lanka tour in 2020-21, Joe Root has been playing in a different league as a batsman. During the aforementioned 20-match period, Root himself was scoring runs like a self-aware machine. During this phase, the entire England cricket team scored 9,068 aggregated runs. Joe Root scored over 2000 of these, over a quarter of the total runs, at an average of 54.4. The 2,000 runs included 2 double-centuries, including a match-winning knock in India, 6 centuries, including 3 back-to-back centuries in 3 games against India at home, and 12 50+ scores. A constant lack of support from the non-striker’s end along with increasing pressure to deliver results without his first-choice XI contributed greatly to extinguishing an otherwise exceptional captaincy record.

Joe Root remains the most successful English captain in red-ball cricket with 27 wins across 64 test matches and a winning percentage of 51% in games that produced a result. He scored a century in his first match as captain (he went on to score 190) and led his team to series victories against South Africa, India, West Indies, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka. The series victory in Sri Lanka in 2018 was the first such victory for England against Sri Lanka in Sri Lanka in 17 years and was also the team’s first away series win in 2 years. He also led his team to a 3-1 victory against South Africa in South Africa during the 2019-20 season.

Post Ashes 2022, he captained his side for one more series against the West Indies before deciding to pass on the mantle to close friend and English cricket Talisman, Ben Stokes and as Bazball took over English red ball cricket, Joe Root used his skill and experience to transform into a more refined, aggressive, and responsible player. The pre and post-Bazball numbers tell a story of a versatile and dynamic player.

During the first test of Bazball, Root scored a sublime 115* against New Zealand to take his team and the man-of-the-match trophy home. He hit 12 boundaries at a strike rate of 68. This marked the onset of some very special innings. Joe Root was a prolific batter even before he integrated Bazball into his game and had scored nearly 10,000 test runs by this point at an average of 48.97 and a strike rate of over 55.

However, the first knock against New Zealand, in which he scored at a rapid pace, was an ominous announcement from the youngest member of the Fab 4. Some of his highlight performances post this match include:

• Scoring 176, striking at 83, and 86*, at 69, in the next two matches against New Zealand
• During the rescheduled 5^th test against India in July 2022, stitching an unbroken 279 run partnership with Yorkshire buddy Jonny Bairstow to chase down England’s greatest run chase ever with 7 wickets and 2 sessions to spare.
• Scoring a quick-fire 73 @106 against Pakistan in an away game in an otherwise indifferent tour in a series that was dominated by the younger English talent.
• Against New Zealand at Wellington, Joe Root made 153* @ 68 as he was left the last man standing in one of the greatest test matches of all time which England lost by 1 run.
• An unbeaten Ashes Hundred in the first test of the 2023 series, striking @77.
• A gritty and resilient 122* in Ranchi and an aggressive 84 at Dharamshala in 2024. Both these knocks had Joe Root attempting to win the matches on his own.

Overall, since Bazball began, Joe Root has amassed 1,847 runs and has increased his strike rate, scoring 14 more runs per 100 balls that he faces. His average in this period has increased from 49 to 53 and his balls per boundary and balls per six have decreased from 16 to 13 and 722 to 140 respectively. His conversion rate, a common critique for the batsman, has also significantly improved as he is taking 2 innings fewer to score a hundred on average since. He has made 6 hundreds and 14 50+ scores in the 41 innings he has played since May 2022. Often viewed as the conventional, orthodox test player, Joe Root has silenced critics with his reverse lap sixes and sumptuous cover drives. As England continues its path for redemption in test cricket, he will no doubt play a huge part in the exciting journey ahead.