England vs New Zealand: New era, same Joe Root as Stokes and Co script winning start to home season
England vs New Zealand: New era, same Joe Root as Stokes and Co script winning start to home season
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New coach, new captain, new era – same Joe Root. For all that England will be enthused by the former, it is the latter which will prove most reassuring to their fans and which has ensured their summer is off to a winning start.
It has been a long time since this side has tasted Test match victory, nine games, 281 days, whole fruitless tours of Australia and the Caribbean in the rear view mirror – but among those months of doom and gloom, and in fact going back even further than that, there has been one constant – Root.
Since the start of the series against India last summer he now has six centuries in 13 Tests, while he has nine since the start of 2021, including two magnificent double hundreds. How much worse would things have been for England without Root? The English language might not yet be sufficiently evolved to adequately describe the horrors of that particular scenario, however what is certain is that without him they would not have even come close to victory here in the thrilling series opener at Lord’s.
He came to the crease on Saturday afternoon as he so often does, England three wickets down with less than 50 runs on the board, the living embodiment of the “Ah s**t, here we go again” meme – England 231 runs short of their target against New Zealand’s bowling Cerberus of Boult, Southee and Jamieson, and with at least half of the remaining batsmen to come comfortably Test match number 11s.
England have leant so heavily on Root in recent years it is fairly incredible he remains the same ebullient character, somehow undimmed by the strain and responsibility heaped on him as captain and chief, sometimes seemingly only, run-scorer. Staring down the barrel of a defeat that would have been equal parts disheartening and embarrassing having bowled New Zealand out for 132 on the first day, he once again came to England’s rescue with a magnificent, match-winning century.
Saturday had seen Root, first with Stokes and then with Foakes, put England on the path to victory. When they arrived on Day Four they needed 61 more to win with five wickets remaining – simple enough on paper, far more complicated in reality, especially factoring in the aforementioned strength of New Zealand’s bowlers and the length of England’s tail, not to mention throwing in the heavily overcast conditions for good measure.
Root though proved undaunted and in the end New Zealand weren’t given even a sliver of hope, as first a 26th Test hundred – remarkably his first in the fourth innings – and then victory by five wickets were knocked off, and much to the delight of the crowd, seven balls inside the 15 over cutoff that ensured they all got a full refund on their tickets.
Root’s hundredth run of the innings was also his 10,000 in Test cricket, making him only the 14th man in history to reach the milestone, and extraordinarily the equal – to the day – youngest along with Alastair Cook.
In his first Test freed from the shackles of captaincy, Root did what he has done for so much of his career – thrived – this time all the sweeter for carrying England to victory. Now back in the ranks he still has much of his career to come, names like Lara, Dravid, Ponting and Tendulkar to chase down in the all-time run-scorers list and more Tests to win for England, and when he plays like this long may that continue.
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