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Is Joe Root the greatest England batsman.......


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......of my lifetime?

 

Atherton, and others, opine:

 

Is Joe Root the greatest England batsman of my lifetime? He is – just

Graham Gooch, David Gower and Kevin Pietersen also stand out — but the hungry, stylish, exuberant and inventive Root combines the best traits of all three

 

Mike Atherton

Chief Cricket Correspondent

Monday August 15 2022, 12.01am, The Times

 

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/is-joe-root-the-greatest-england-batsman-of-my-lifetime-he-is-just-gw532fxnv

 

Root celebrates his century against India in last month’s fifth Test

Root celebrates his century against India in last month’s fifth Test

GEOFF CADDICK/AFP/GETTY IMAGES

 

Judgment being necessarily subjective, it is wise to admit to the limitations of this exercise from the outset. The Times cricket correspondent but three before me, the late John Woodcock, had seen the vast majority of the greats of the 20th century, and all those since the Second World War. My experience stretches back only to about 1980, when I first remember watching cricket with any sense of knowledge or understanding. Four decades is all I can call upon, in contrast to Woodcock, who was known to start a piece late in life with “As recently as 1954 . . . ”

The best four English batsmen I have seen are (in order of their international debuts) Graham Gooch, David Gower, Kevin Pietersen and Joe Root. I readily admit that these selections may be flawed, subject to faulty memory, shaped by peculiar circumstances and formed by an attachment to a certain type of player. But, for better or worse, they are my choices.

I haven’t chosen Alastair Cook (the other player that merits serious consideration in that time), despite Cook having scored more Test runs and hundreds than any other England batsman. What he did was remarkable, yet not so remarkable to someone who played in a similar vein, if not so well. I can identify with a lot of Cook’s strengths — tenacity, toughness, powers of concentration and an ability to grind bowlers down — because I had those strengths myself, if not to the same degree.

I’m drawn to the players who did things I couldn’t and played in a very different, more aggressive way. All the players I’ve chosen had the ability to take the attack to the bowler, to hit good balls for four (or six) and to change the mood of a game in a session, as well as defend or accumulate when required. Cook rarely dominated, although I admit that comparing an opener to a No 4 or No 5 batsman is comparing apples with pears. He had it tougher than all those except Gooch.

 

“It is a batsman’s duty to take the initiative and play shots,” said the greatest of them all, Don Bradman, in The Art of Cricket.

 

I also know that I’m biased towards players — Gooch and Gower in this instance — whom I watched as a boy and played with at the start of my career. Who is not shaped by those they watched in their formative years? And who is not swayed by those players seen from the vantage point of youth, when greatness appears so distant and so unattainable? I watched the two Gs in my teenage years, then played with them in my early 20s, when I was still learning but they were fully formed.

Gooch had some rocky times with England and was only averaging in the mid-to-late 30s when I got into the England team. Over the course of his career, could I objectively say Gooch was better than Cook? Probably not, but I lean to the heroes of my youth. I still have in my mind’s eye a particular shot that he played off Malcolm Marshall at Old Trafford in an ODI in 1991, when he hit the great bowler back over his head, all power and authority.

 

Gooch played some of the best innings Atherton has seen

Gooch played some of the best innings Atherton has seen

GETTY IMAGES

 

Over a four-year period between 1990-94, when I was just starting out, Gooch averaged more than 60 in home Tests, playing some of the best innings I have ever seen, notably 154 v West Indies at Headingley in 1991. He was a brilliant, brave player of fast bowling, a dominant player of spin, and greedy with it. For all that it is dangerous to hark back, no recent England batsman has had to face anything like the terrors of West Indies’ quartet in the 1980s, with no limitation on bouncers.

 

Gower brings to mind the question of aesthetics. Does style matter? Not in the dressing room so much, where productivity and match-winning innings matter more, but to the supporter paying gate money, or a TV licence or subscription fee, it does, and few England batsmen played as gracefully as Gower, or have been so loved for the way they played. His type, players of touch and timing, will become rarer still in the world of T20 where power and strength carry the day, so the memory of his batting shines even brighter in retrospect.

He was seriously good, too. Courage can be defined in many ways and mostly it is thought of in a physical sense, but it takes courage to back your instincts and continue to play your shots when opprobrium is just a faint tickle from a loose waft outside off stump away. Nobody I played with timed the ball as sweetly or with such apparent effortlessness, to the extent that he could make you feel inadequate at the other end, as I did in Sydney in 1991.

 

Whether he was a player of great innings or a great player is a question and distinction that has been levelled at Pietersen, who played some of the most memorable innings of the past 20 years. Colombo, Headingley, the Oval, Mumbai — the places spring to mind readily where he dominated the stage and stretched the horizons of the possible with sublime, outrageous strokeplay.

Pietersen also stands out in Atherton’s mind

Pietersen also stands out in Atherton’s mind

TIMES PHOTOGRAPHER MARC ASPLAND

 

He did things other players could not and occasionally took apart even the greatest bowlers. When Shane Warne was reduced to bowling way outside leg stump at Adelaide in 2006, it was the only time I had seen at first hand the great leg spinner back down in a battle.

Not even Pietersen was a better player of spin than Root, though, who is without question the best player of slow bowling I have seen in England colours and, in the round, is probably the best England batsman I have seen. “Footwork and balance will always remain the cornerstones of batting,” Bradman wrote, and Root’s rhythm, movement, balance and footwork is second to none of those I have mentioned.

 

Having seen the entirety of his career, it is hard to think of a time when he has been in a really poor run of form, or when his fluency has deserted him. He combines the best traits of the other three: hunger for runs, style and, more recently, exuberance and invention. He has struggled a bit more in Australia with the extra bounce — of them all, Gower probably enjoyed Australian conditions the most — and I have a suspicion that against the really quickest bowlers he would struggle more than Gooch, for example. These are quibbles set against an outstanding career.

 

When I talked to Woodcock just before he died, he was certain that Root ranked high among English batsmen (although whether he rated him above Denis Compton is doubtful). Woodcock said: “I’m very particular about greatness. The essence of great batsmanship is calculated risk. That’s why I hope Root doesn’t have that knocked out of him. There will always be those who grind out runs, but the best players take risks and play with charm. Root is too good to become a percentage player and it wouldn’t be good for the game.”

If anything, since Woodcock’s passing, Root has become even less of a percentage player, having taken his game to new levels while increasing his productivity. Given the runs he scores and the way he gets them, he must be among the very best we have produced.

 

 

SIMON WILDE

Score runs in Australia – then Root can be considered England’s greatest

 

Many variables complicate attempts to compare players from different generations. Pitches, once uncovered and now covered, have changed beyond all recognition, and there are now limits on the number of bouncers. Immediately after the war, a new ball could be taken after 55 overs; now it can happen every 80 overs. The Decision Review System has, in the past dozen years, reconfigured the sport’s arts.

But one thing has never changed — the pressure that comes with playing Test cricket, the toughest form of the game, against the best sides home and away. When the stakes are highest, only the very best thrive. Strip away the statistics — how did someone do against the strongest opposition? On the toughest tours?

 

Note, for instance, that Denis Compton and Peter May averaged 20 fewer overseas than they did in England, while Colin Cowdrey should have done better than average 34 against Australia, as should Ted Dexter, who managed only two hundreds in 35 Ashes innings.

Walter Hammond, like Alastair Cook, had one extraordinarily good series against Australia, but was reined in by the great leg spinners Clarrie Grimmett and Tiger O’Reilly.

 

These shed an interesting light on Joe Root, who is building a case as the finest batsman this country has nurtured. In three tours on the bouncier surfaces of Australia though, he has yet to score a hundred. In fact, his three centuries in 56 innings against Australia date from 2013-15, since when he has largely been kept quiet by a seam attack’s relentless probing. Graham Gooch similarly had an indifferent record against Australia — four hundreds in 79 innings — but was exceptional against a West Indies pace attack of unparalleled ferocity.

There is also a distinction to be drawn between those who opened the batting and those more cosseted in the middle order. Geoff Boycott scored more than 2,000 runs at an average of 45 against both Australia and West Indies. Two openers of earlier generations deserve special mention: in Ashes Tests for England, no one has scored more runs than Jack Hobbs, while no one England batsman averaged more than his opening partner, Herbert Sutcliffe.

 

Even in the bigger series, some runs matter more than others. How often do they contribute to a win? To an extent the modern player has an advantage because the tempo of games is faster, so there are fewer draws. England never lost when Boycott scored a century and only once when Ken Barrington did so, but more than half their hundreds came in draws. Of Root’s 28 hundreds, 20 have helped to shape victories.

 

Root and other modern batsmen rate strongly by thriving in Asia, a region that for many years English cricketers and administrators eschewed out of cultural distaste. Of the 118 Tests England have played there almost half have taken place since 2000. Root has scored 1,992 runs there at 52 in conditions that would have confounded many of his predecessors. Similarly, Cook scored 2,710 runs in Asia.

 

I have reported on more than 300 of England’s Tests since the mid-1990s and some of the best innings I’ve seen in that time came in Asia — by Cook, Root, Marcus Trescothick, Graham Thorpe and Kevin Pietersen.

For audacity and fearlessness, no one I’ve seen has batted better than Michael Vaughan on his one Test tour to Australia, Pietersen at the Oval, Headingley and Mumbai, or Jonny Bairstow on a number of occasions this summer. No one was more resilient than Cook.

I have a soft spot for Thorpe, among the bravest and most skilful of all English batsmen. There have been no better left-handers since the war than Thorpe and the beguilingly stylish David Gower.

 

The great players challenge old orthodoxies. Like Pietersen, Root has synthesised the best elements of long and short-form batting, encapsulated by his use of the reverse ramp in this summer’s Tests. Root has unfinished business with Australia, but if he can put that right in the next three years he will deserve to be saluted as England’s all-time champion.

 

 

ROBIN MARLAR, EX-SUNDAY TIMES CRICKET CORRESPONDENT, SUSSEX (1951-68)

I loved Compton but Dexter was imperious

 

Is Joe Root the greatest English batsman ever? Never compare, as the old adage runs. Rather, a lovely long life in cricket has taught me that it’s better to take note.

Sporting stature was recognisable early on when, as a ten-year-old, I stood on a terrace at Villa Park and marvelled at the mesmerising skill of Stanley Matthews in his Stoke City kit, mince-meating Ernie “Mush” Callaghan, the bald-headed Aston Villa full back.

Soon I was allowed to take the train and bus to Edgbaston. Walter Hammond was the big draw. His was the name I wanted on my bat instead of the automaton Australian, Don Bradman. Youngsters are never satisfied. Hammond was graceful yet muscular — a truly powerful player. He made batting look simple, as all the great players do.

Three others with record-breaking scores straddled the war. Len Hutton, Denis Compton and Bill Edrich had all made centuries in the 1930s. After varied non-cricketing service, all continued to cause panic, by reputation and performance, into the 1940s and beyond. It was my pleasurable misfortune to suffer at their hands.

Len was a wonder. He represented the standard by which every player was judged. Classy in his strokeplay, even with a foreshortened forearm after a wartime gym accident, he showed that other players would follow a professional leader, however reluctantly. Until then, skippers had been amateurs.

 

Compton was a hero to Marlar

Compton was a hero to Marlar

PA/PRESS ASSOCIATION

 

Denis was my hero. It was such a challenge to bowl to him. He radiated glamour. Light on his feet, he was everywhere, all over you, dominant. He was a master of two of Root’s main strokes — the sweep and square drive.

Bill, a decorated pilot, has to be bracketed with Denis for their deeds of 1947, when the Middlesex pair scored more than 3,500 runs and 16 and 17 centuries respectively. Bill’s party piece was today’s slog sweep. Over and over again. Could he party? At one of his weddings, John Warr, a fine fast bowler who captained us both, and a comic to boot, was asked: “Bride or groom?” He replied: “No. Season-ticket holder.”

Now we come to the postwar vintage. At the age of 18, Peter May (then at Charterhouse) hit one of half a dozen sixes on Harrow’s sixth-form ground into a London omnibus and onwards to South Ruislip and beyond. A mighty whack. Effortless timing and a natural swing. David Sheppard, though not as talented as May, had an acute cricket brain. At the end of his life David told me: “When I went through the gate, I expected to score a hundred.” Perhaps only a reverend could have said that.

Ken Barrington first came into view as a 16-year-old leg spinner, before growing into the standout batsman at the Oval. There, his defence was impeccable, like Geoff Boycott’s. Tom Graveney, probably as glorious a strokemaker as anyone mentioned here, was troubled by a fatal flaw, a tendency to play the bowler rather than the ball.

Then, there was the time I found myself fielding at cover point to a new batsman at Cambridge. Odd that a poor fielder was there. Blame the captain. Alas, I was the captain. Suddenly a back-foot drive of unexpected majesty whistled past. The fielder never stirred. The batsman was Ted Dexter and though he made fewer than ten, he instantly became the No 1 target as the next captain of Sussex and eventually England. The man was imperious.

Somewhere, someone will have had the same experience with Root. As I think they say in Sheffield, when you see brilliance, “You know tha knows.”

 

 

MICKY STEWART, SURREY 1954-72, FORMER ENGLAND MANAGER

I admired Boycott – he got hard runs

 

The person who was a bit of a hero of mine, as he was for many thousands, was Denis Compton. He and Len Hutton were the players, along with Wally Hammond, who I most admired as a young fellow. I was 12th man for Surrey up at Leeds for what was one of Hutton’s last games for Yorkshire and I got to know him. I also played against Denis a couple of times and caught him out off the bowling of Peter Loader.

Hutton and Compton were both placers and strokers of the ball. The majority of top players before that stroked the ball, but the game changes. The first really top player I saw who was a hard striker of the ball was Peter May. Ted Dexter struck it like a rocket too, but he also stroked it and placed it.

In the mid-fifties when I started, the ball tended to go sideways on English pitches that, unlike today, were uncovered to the elements, so top players were judged on how well they played the ball when it moved sideways — whether it was swing, seam or spin. Could you apply yourself and play an innings to win?

With players like Dexter and May, the majority of professionals in the dressing-room would be asking, “How do they play when it goes sideways?” The answer was very well.

 

I played with Colin Cowdrey when we put on about 140 in a trial game. Even at that time, when he was 16, he was obviously well-coached. Again, he was a caresser of the ball and a good player on a dodgy surface. People said he didn’t dictate and wasn’t ruthless, but that was part of him. I would put him alongside David Gower in the way they stroked the ball.

I don’t think the game ever saw the best of Ken Barrington. If he had played at a county other than Surrey he would have been able to show exactly what he could do, because he could play strokes all around the wicket. But if you were out trying to hit over the top at Surrey, you would get stick. He was as strong as a lion, but also learned to play when the ball turned and when it swung.

Graham Gooch was never happy unless you won. The idea was to play your innings according to the match situation. You have to score runs at the right rate and in the right way to win. Gooch was tremendous in the way he worked at his batting and was reliable. He could hit everything on the up.

I also admired Geoff Boycott and John Edrich hugely as run-getters. Boycott played some outstanding innings when things were difficult and there was a consistency about him as well.

 

The stats that put him on top of the pile

Root stands above his team-mates to a greater extent than any of England's previous top batsmen. One way of measuring his greatness is to compare his average with the average of the England top six in Tests in which Root has played. While Root is averaging 50.76, during his 121 Tests, the England top six have been averaging 35.42 per wicket in those matches. Root’s average is 43.31 per cent above that. On this measure he is fractionally ahead of Jacks Hobbs and top of the 25 England batsmen with the highest averages among those who have scored 1500 runs or more. This measure takes into account how plentiful runs were during the era in which batsmen played. Those who scored lots of runs in an era when all their team-mates were doing the same rank less highly. Those who score heavily while their team-mates don’t, either through ineptitude or because of the quality of opposition bowling attacks, are rewarded.

 
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Is Root the greatest? Too soon to tell. But, provisionally, subject to adjustment after a king pair in the first test against the Springboks, possibly yes, mibbees.

 

Otherwise I agree with all of the opinions in the articles, not that I’m easily persuaded or anything. The true answer is that there isn’t a GBoAT. Is the greatest opener greater than the greatest number 3 or the greatest middle order?

 

Graveney wins the concours d’elegance. Boycott doesn’t but look at Boycott’s averages against WI and Australia. OK, it’s Compton. Or more likely May. I’ll come back when I’ve made up my minds.

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24 minutes ago, Scott7 said:

Is Root the greatest? Too soon to tell. But, provisionally, subject to adjustment after a king pair in the first test against the Springboks, possibly yes, mibbees.

 

Otherwise I agree with all of the opinions in the articles, not that I’m easily persuaded or anything. The true answer is that there isn’t a GBoAT. Is the greatest opener greater than the greatest number 3 or the greatest middle order?

 

Graveney wins the concours d’elegance. Boycott doesn’t but look at Boycott’s averages against WI and Australia. OK, it’s Compton. Or more likely May. I’ll come back when I’ve made up my minds.

Stop dithering and play the shot, man!!

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8 hours ago, Uilleam said:

......of my lifetime?

 

Atherton, and others, opine:

 

Is Joe Root the greatest England batsman of my lifetime? He is – just

Graham Gooch, David Gower and Kevin Pietersen also stand out — but the hungry, stylish, exuberant and inventive Root combines the best traits of all three

 

Mike Atherton

Chief Cricket Correspondent

Monday August 15 2022, 12.01am, The Times

 

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/is-joe-root-the-greatest-england-batsman-of-my-lifetime-he-is-just-gw532fxnv

 

Root celebrates his century against India in last month’s fifth Test

Root celebrates his century against India in last month’s fifth Test

GEOFF CADDICK/AFP/GETTY IMAGES

 

Judgment being necessarily subjective, it is wise to admit to the limitations of this exercise from the outset. The Times cricket correspondent but three before me, the late John Woodcock, had seen the vast majority of the greats of the 20th century, and all those since the Second World War. My experience stretches back only to about 1980, when I first remember watching cricket with any sense of knowledge or understanding. Four decades is all I can call upon, in contrast to Woodcock, who was known to start a piece late in life with “As recently as 1954 . . . ”

The best four English batsmen I have seen are (in order of their international debuts) Graham Gooch, David Gower, Kevin Pietersen and Joe Root. I readily admit that these selections may be flawed, subject to faulty memory, shaped by peculiar circumstances and formed by an attachment to a certain type of player. But, for better or worse, they are my choices.

I haven’t chosen Alastair Cook (the other player that merits serious consideration in that time), despite Cook having scored more Test runs and hundreds than any other England batsman. What he did was remarkable, yet not so remarkable to someone who played in a similar vein, if not so well. I can identify with a lot of Cook’s strengths — tenacity, toughness, powers of concentration and an ability to grind bowlers down — because I had those strengths myself, if not to the same degree.

I’m drawn to the players who did things I couldn’t and played in a very different, more aggressive way. All the players I’ve chosen had the ability to take the attack to the bowler, to hit good balls for four (or six) and to change the mood of a game in a session, as well as defend or accumulate when required. Cook rarely dominated, although I admit that comparing an opener to a No 4 or No 5 batsman is comparing apples with pears. He had it tougher than all those except Gooch.

 

“It is a batsman’s duty to take the initiative and play shots,” said the greatest of them all, Don Bradman, in The Art of Cricket.

 

I also know that I’m biased towards players — Gooch and Gower in this instance — whom I watched as a boy and played with at the start of my career. Who is not shaped by those they watched in their formative years? And who is not swayed by those players seen from the vantage point of youth, when greatness appears so distant and so unattainable? I watched the two Gs in my teenage years, then played with them in my early 20s, when I was still learning but they were fully formed.

Gooch had some rocky times with England and was only averaging in the mid-to-late 30s when I got into the England team. Over the course of his career, could I objectively say Gooch was better than Cook? Probably not, but I lean to the heroes of my youth. I still have in my mind’s eye a particular shot that he played off Malcolm Marshall at Old Trafford in an ODI in 1991, when he hit the great bowler back over his head, all power and authority.

 

Gooch played some of the best innings Atherton has seen

Gooch played some of the best innings Atherton has seen

GETTY IMAGES

 

Over a four-year period between 1990-94, when I was just starting out, Gooch averaged more than 60 in home Tests, playing some of the best innings I have ever seen, notably 154 v West Indies at Headingley in 1991. He was a brilliant, brave player of fast bowling, a dominant player of spin, and greedy with it. For all that it is dangerous to hark back, no recent England batsman has had to face anything like the terrors of West Indies’ quartet in the 1980s, with no limitation on bouncers.

 

Gower brings to mind the question of aesthetics. Does style matter? Not in the dressing room so much, where productivity and match-winning innings matter more, but to the supporter paying gate money, or a TV licence or subscription fee, it does, and few England batsmen played as gracefully as Gower, or have been so loved for the way they played. His type, players of touch and timing, will become rarer still in the world of T20 where power and strength carry the day, so the memory of his batting shines even brighter in retrospect.

He was seriously good, too. Courage can be defined in many ways and mostly it is thought of in a physical sense, but it takes courage to back your instincts and continue to play your shots when opprobrium is just a faint tickle from a loose waft outside off stump away. Nobody I played with timed the ball as sweetly or with such apparent effortlessness, to the extent that he could make you feel inadequate at the other end, as I did in Sydney in 1991.

 

Whether he was a player of great innings or a great player is a question and distinction that has been levelled at Pietersen, who played some of the most memorable innings of the past 20 years. Colombo, Headingley, the Oval, Mumbai — the places spring to mind readily where he dominated the stage and stretched the horizons of the possible with sublime, outrageous strokeplay.

Pietersen also stands out in Atherton’s mind

Pietersen also stands out in Atherton’s mind

TIMES PHOTOGRAPHER MARC ASPLAND

 

He did things other players could not and occasionally took apart even the greatest bowlers. When Shane Warne was reduced to bowling way outside leg stump at Adelaide in 2006, it was the only time I had seen at first hand the great leg spinner back down in a battle.

Not even Pietersen was a better player of spin than Root, though, who is without question the best player of slow bowling I have seen in England colours and, in the round, is probably the best England batsman I have seen. “Footwork and balance will always remain the cornerstones of batting,” Bradman wrote, and Root’s rhythm, movement, balance and footwork is second to none of those I have mentioned.

 

Having seen the entirety of his career, it is hard to think of a time when he has been in a really poor run of form, or when his fluency has deserted him. He combines the best traits of the other three: hunger for runs, style and, more recently, exuberance and invention. He has struggled a bit more in Australia with the extra bounce — of them all, Gower probably enjoyed Australian conditions the most — and I have a suspicion that against the really quickest bowlers he would struggle more than Gooch, for example. These are quibbles set against an outstanding career.

 

When I talked to Woodcock just before he died, he was certain that Root ranked high among English batsmen (although whether he rated him above Denis Compton is doubtful). Woodcock said: “I’m very particular about greatness. The essence of great batsmanship is calculated risk. That’s why I hope Root doesn’t have that knocked out of him. There will always be those who grind out runs, but the best players take risks and play with charm. Root is too good to become a percentage player and it wouldn’t be good for the game.”

If anything, since Woodcock’s passing, Root has become even less of a percentage player, having taken his game to new levels while increasing his productivity. Given the runs he scores and the way he gets them, he must be among the very best we have produced.

 

 

SIMON WILDE

Score runs in Australia – then Root can be considered England’s greatest

 

Many variables complicate attempts to compare players from different generations. Pitches, once uncovered and now covered, have changed beyond all recognition, and there are now limits on the number of bouncers. Immediately after the war, a new ball could be taken after 55 overs; now it can happen every 80 overs. The Decision Review System has, in the past dozen years, reconfigured the sport’s arts.

But one thing has never changed — the pressure that comes with playing Test cricket, the toughest form of the game, against the best sides home and away. When the stakes are highest, only the very best thrive. Strip away the statistics — how did someone do against the strongest opposition? On the toughest tours?

 

Note, for instance, that Denis Compton and Peter May averaged 20 fewer overseas than they did in England, while Colin Cowdrey should have done better than average 34 against Australia, as should Ted Dexter, who managed only two hundreds in 35 Ashes innings.

Walter Hammond, like Alastair Cook, had one extraordinarily good series against Australia, but was reined in by the great leg spinners Clarrie Grimmett and Tiger O’Reilly.

 

These shed an interesting light on Joe Root, who is building a case as the finest batsman this country has nurtured. In three tours on the bouncier surfaces of Australia though, he has yet to score a hundred. In fact, his three centuries in 56 innings against Australia date from 2013-15, since when he has largely been kept quiet by a seam attack’s relentless probing. Graham Gooch similarly had an indifferent record against Australia — four hundreds in 79 innings — but was exceptional against a West Indies pace attack of unparalleled ferocity.

There is also a distinction to be drawn between those who opened the batting and those more cosseted in the middle order. Geoff Boycott scored more than 2,000 runs at an average of 45 against both Australia and West Indies. Two openers of earlier generations deserve special mention: in Ashes Tests for England, no one has scored more runs than Jack Hobbs, while no one England batsman averaged more than his opening partner, Herbert Sutcliffe.

 

Even in the bigger series, some runs matter more than others. How often do they contribute to a win? To an extent the modern player has an advantage because the tempo of games is faster, so there are fewer draws. England never lost when Boycott scored a century and only once when Ken Barrington did so, but more than half their hundreds came in draws. Of Root’s 28 hundreds, 20 have helped to shape victories.

 

Root and other modern batsmen rate strongly by thriving in Asia, a region that for many years English cricketers and administrators eschewed out of cultural distaste. Of the 118 Tests England have played there almost half have taken place since 2000. Root has scored 1,992 runs there at 52 in conditions that would have confounded many of his predecessors. Similarly, Cook scored 2,710 runs in Asia.

 

I have reported on more than 300 of England’s Tests since the mid-1990s and some of the best innings I’ve seen in that time came in Asia — by Cook, Root, Marcus Trescothick, Graham Thorpe and Kevin Pietersen.

For audacity and fearlessness, no one I’ve seen has batted better than Michael Vaughan on his one Test tour to Australia, Pietersen at the Oval, Headingley and Mumbai, or Jonny Bairstow on a number of occasions this summer. No one was more resilient than Cook.

I have a soft spot for Thorpe, among the bravest and most skilful of all English batsmen. There have been no better left-handers since the war than Thorpe and the beguilingly stylish David Gower.

 

The great players challenge old orthodoxies. Like Pietersen, Root has synthesised the best elements of long and short-form batting, encapsulated by his use of the reverse ramp in this summer’s Tests. Root has unfinished business with Australia, but if he can put that right in the next three years he will deserve to be saluted as England’s all-time champion.

 

 

ROBIN MARLAR, EX-SUNDAY TIMES CRICKET CORRESPONDENT, SUSSEX (1951-68)

I loved Compton but Dexter was imperious

 

Is Joe Root the greatest English batsman ever? Never compare, as the old adage runs. Rather, a lovely long life in cricket has taught me that it’s better to take note.

Sporting stature was recognisable early on when, as a ten-year-old, I stood on a terrace at Villa Park and marvelled at the mesmerising skill of Stanley Matthews in his Stoke City kit, mince-meating Ernie “Mush” Callaghan, the bald-headed Aston Villa full back.

Soon I was allowed to take the train and bus to Edgbaston. Walter Hammond was the big draw. His was the name I wanted on my bat instead of the automaton Australian, Don Bradman. Youngsters are never satisfied. Hammond was graceful yet muscular — a truly powerful player. He made batting look simple, as all the great players do.

Three others with record-breaking scores straddled the war. Len Hutton, Denis Compton and Bill Edrich had all made centuries in the 1930s. After varied non-cricketing service, all continued to cause panic, by reputation and performance, into the 1940s and beyond. It was my pleasurable misfortune to suffer at their hands.

Len was a wonder. He represented the standard by which every player was judged. Classy in his strokeplay, even with a foreshortened forearm after a wartime gym accident, he showed that other players would follow a professional leader, however reluctantly. Until then, skippers had been amateurs.

 

Compton was a hero to Marlar

Compton was a hero to Marlar

PA/PRESS ASSOCIATION

 

Denis was my hero. It was such a challenge to bowl to him. He radiated glamour. Light on his feet, he was everywhere, all over you, dominant. He was a master of two of Root’s main strokes — the sweep and square drive.

Bill, a decorated pilot, has to be bracketed with Denis for their deeds of 1947, when the Middlesex pair scored more than 3,500 runs and 16 and 17 centuries respectively. Bill’s party piece was today’s slog sweep. Over and over again. Could he party? At one of his weddings, John Warr, a fine fast bowler who captained us both, and a comic to boot, was asked: “Bride or groom?” He replied: “No. Season-ticket holder.”

Now we come to the postwar vintage. At the age of 18, Peter May (then at Charterhouse) hit one of half a dozen sixes on Harrow’s sixth-form ground into a London omnibus and onwards to South Ruislip and beyond. A mighty whack. Effortless timing and a natural swing. David Sheppard, though not as talented as May, had an acute cricket brain. At the end of his life David told me: “When I went through the gate, I expected to score a hundred.” Perhaps only a reverend could have said that.

Ken Barrington first came into view as a 16-year-old leg spinner, before growing into the standout batsman at the Oval. There, his defence was impeccable, like Geoff Boycott’s. Tom Graveney, probably as glorious a strokemaker as anyone mentioned here, was troubled by a fatal flaw, a tendency to play the bowler rather than the ball.

Then, there was the time I found myself fielding at cover point to a new batsman at Cambridge. Odd that a poor fielder was there. Blame the captain. Alas, I was the captain. Suddenly a back-foot drive of unexpected majesty whistled past. The fielder never stirred. The batsman was Ted Dexter and though he made fewer than ten, he instantly became the No 1 target as the next captain of Sussex and eventually England. The man was imperious.

Somewhere, someone will have had the same experience with Root. As I think they say in Sheffield, when you see brilliance, “You know tha knows.”

 

 

MICKY STEWART, SURREY 1954-72, FORMER ENGLAND MANAGER

I admired Boycott – he got hard runs

 

The person who was a bit of a hero of mine, as he was for many thousands, was Denis Compton. He and Len Hutton were the players, along with Wally Hammond, who I most admired as a young fellow. I was 12th man for Surrey up at Leeds for what was one of Hutton’s last games for Yorkshire and I got to know him. I also played against Denis a couple of times and caught him out off the bowling of Peter Loader.

Hutton and Compton were both placers and strokers of the ball. The majority of top players before that stroked the ball, but the game changes. The first really top player I saw who was a hard striker of the ball was Peter May. Ted Dexter struck it like a rocket too, but he also stroked it and placed it.

In the mid-fifties when I started, the ball tended to go sideways on English pitches that, unlike today, were uncovered to the elements, so top players were judged on how well they played the ball when it moved sideways — whether it was swing, seam or spin. Could you apply yourself and play an innings to win?

With players like Dexter and May, the majority of professionals in the dressing-room would be asking, “How do they play when it goes sideways?” The answer was very well.

 

I played with Colin Cowdrey when we put on about 140 in a trial game. Even at that time, when he was 16, he was obviously well-coached. Again, he was a caresser of the ball and a good player on a dodgy surface. People said he didn’t dictate and wasn’t ruthless, but that was part of him. I would put him alongside David Gower in the way they stroked the ball.

I don’t think the game ever saw the best of Ken Barrington. If he had played at a county other than Surrey he would have been able to show exactly what he could do, because he could play strokes all around the wicket. But if you were out trying to hit over the top at Surrey, you would get stick. He was as strong as a lion, but also learned to play when the ball turned and when it swung.

Graham Gooch was never happy unless you won. The idea was to play your innings according to the match situation. You have to score runs at the right rate and in the right way to win. Gooch was tremendous in the way he worked at his batting and was reliable. He could hit everything on the up.

I also admired Geoff Boycott and John Edrich hugely as run-getters. Boycott played some outstanding innings when things were difficult and there was a consistency about him as well.

 

The stats that put him on top of the pile

Root stands above his team-mates to a greater extent than any of England's previous top batsmen. One way of measuring his greatness is to compare his average with the average of the England top six in Tests in which Root has played. While Root is averaging 50.76, during his 121 Tests, the England top six have been averaging 35.42 per wicket in those matches. Root’s average is 43.31 per cent above that. On this measure he is fractionally ahead of Jacks Hobbs and top of the 25 England batsmen with the highest averages among those who have scored 1500 runs or more. This measure takes into account how plentiful runs were during the era in which batsmen played. Those who scored lots of runs in an era when all their team-mates were doing the same rank less highly. Those who score heavily while their team-mates don’t, either through ineptitude or because of the quality of opposition bowling attacks, are rewarded.

 

Definately Gooch over Root in my opinion. 

 

Just look at the bowlers he faced from the other cricket playing nations. He also didnt stonewall like Geoffrey B who i admire for his commitment but Gooch was the one to get the scorecard moving. His 154 against the world class WI 4 fast bowlers and his 333 against India were highlights. His England career would have been greater but for the silly ban for him taking part in the rebel tour of South Africa. He also got Essex winning trophies. 

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