Joe Root - the stupidest shot in English test cricket history

[SRT100]

10 hours ago, Frustrated said:

I m sure the Australian media will make the most fun out of it.   They are at their best when it comes to roasting the poms.  

 

They have, they have torn him apart.

 

What makes the shot terrible, is the context of the game.

England had their foot almost on India's throat at the start of play, 8 wickets in hand, no Ashwin meaning our bowlers had to bowl long spells.

 

They should have just waited a session before Bazball approach, so India's bowlers would be tired. They could have gone tuk tuk and still scored almost 100 runs in the session, which would have caused India a lot of problems.

[AKane]

Root best since Hutton?

 

He is certainly not better than people like Boycott - whose batting suffered late as his reflexes slowed and exploited by the mighty Windies attacks of the 70s and 80s. Still he was their number 1 target.

 

Boycott played most of his career against raging Aussie attacks with Lillee and co or South Africa led by Peter Pollock and the Windies greats. Most of his career without helmets.

 

Sadly at the end of his career Boycott could not handle the pace of Holding and co. Video quality not good......

 

 

Edited February 17 by AKane

[Vijy]

2 hours ago, AKane said:

Root best since Hutton?

 

He is certainly not better than people like Boycott - whose batting suffered late as his reflexes slowed and exploited by the mighty Windies attacks of the 70s and 80s. Still he was their number 1 target.

 

Boycott played most of his career against raging Aussie attacks with Lillee and co or South Africa led by Peter Pollock and the Windies greats. Most of his career without helmets.

 

Sadly at the end of his career Boycott could not handle the pace of Holding and co. Video quality not good......

 

 

that's why I maintain that Barrington and Hutton were comfortably better than root. even Boycs, May, KP have a claim to be nearly on his level, though a bit lower (debatable).

Edited February 18 by Vijy

[putrevus]

2 hours ago, AKane said:

Root best since Hutton?

 

He is certainly not better than people like Boycott - whose batting suffered late as his reflexes slowed and exploited by the mighty Windies attacks of the 70s and 80s. Still he was their number 1 target.

 

Boycott played most of his career against raging Aussie attacks with Lillee and co or South Africa led by Peter Pollock and the Windies greats. Most of his career without helmets.

 

Sadly at the end of his career Boycott could not handle the pace of Holding and co. Video quality not good......

 

 

Root is the best English batsman better than Boycott. Boycott had no attacking game. 
 

I have not seen Len Hutton or Ken Barington . Only guy to come close when right would be KP. KP had the talent but he was too much of a diva.

Edited February 18 by putrevus

[Vijy]

4 minutes ago, putrevus said:

Root is the best English batsman better than Boycott. Boycott had no attacking game. 
 

I have not seen Len Hutton or Ken Barington . Only guy to come close when right would be KP. KP had the talent but he was too much of a diva.

agreed, regd KP. that's why I place him slightly below (ditto for May). No one on ICF has seen Hutton (one would need to be 70+), but I did get to see last few years of Barry (barrington). I place barry over root, but as I wrote in another post: root is a true ATG (to give him his due)

[Soldier]

7 hours ago, Vijy said:

how is he even "arguably" the GOAT? even in post WW2 era, likes of hutton, compton, barrington are better than him comfortably. and KP and May are nearly his equal.

among the ones I saw, barrington was comfortably better than all Eng bats (did not see hutton & compton in post WW2).

How old are you bro lol haha. Unless you had tapes I guess

[Vijy]

3 minutes ago, Soldier said:

How old are you bro lol haha. Unless you had tapes I guess

I am one of the older members in ICF, and I watched (and remembered) cricket from a young age.

[Serpico]

Roots poor record in Australia will always count against him in these all timer discussions. For England performances against Australia are twice as important and he went missing in 3 tours down under. Can't be greatest English batsmen with that record 

[Majestic]

6 hours ago, Vijy said:

it only tells us he is much better than his contemporaries, which is not saying much because the other eng batters are very poor.

 

I am glad you at least admit root is not better than hutton. However, you don't know barrington's career much and have not seen him, so I would recommend reading up more on him. he had a complete game with attacking strokes, but had to focus chiefly on defense (especially overseas) to prop up his team.

 

In a nutshell, Barrington was much better than root. The latter did poorly in Aus (the "Great Enemy"), which cannot be said of barrington (even barry's "worst" away batting avg [in WI] is over 44). as someone who saw him, he was proficient vs spin, vs swing, and vs bounce. root has a weakness vs bounce, which Aus exploited despite Oz pitches being somewhat flat from mid-2000s until late 2010s (or even till 2020).

 

last, but not least, Barry had severe health issues (culminating in a heart attack at 37-ish), and still played with the courage of a lion. If Root had such issues, he would be at high risk to be struck on the heart, head, etc. remember that such blows were common in the era before helmets, and with unlimited bouncers allowed.

 

@Tattieboy could tell you more about the great Ken, IMO.

 

i still rate root higher than all but smith in this era, but there is no need for hyperbole.

I can't say much about Hutton or even Barrington (based on my reading some do rate Compton even higher than Barrington) but Root is definitely England's greatest batsman in last 50 years and that's an achievement itself. His performance in India tour of England 2021 was legendary scoring 750 runs with bat while the second one leading run scorer, Rohit Sharma, was sitting at 350 odd runs.

 

Additionally, he is a decent off spinner, so basically a Steve Waugh calibre bowler. In Australia, even the overrated Stokes failed too. Root was atleast the player of series in 2015 Ashes, hitting three hundreds with his bat and showing all round batting ability.

Edited February 18 by Majestic

[Majestic]

Root has scored a lot of runs in New Zealand, South Africa, Sri Lanka and UAE. His record has been poor since Bazball effect came into force, meaning Root the batsman has been destroyed with this effect.

 

He was obviously a beast in England, not only averages 53 at home but has won test series vs India and Australia with standout performance and also scored plenty of runs vs other teams like South Africa, Pakistan, New Zealand etc. The only question mark was his performance in Australia and now after the awful series he is having in India, he owes atleast one crucial knock by the end of the tour.

 

 

[AKane]

1 hour ago, putrevus said:

Root is the best English batsman better than Boycott. Boycott had no attacking game. 
 

I have not seen Len Hutton or Ken Barington . Only guy to come close when right would be KP. KP had the talent but he was too much of a diva.

Don't think that Boycott of late 70's and early 80's was the Boycott of ever.

 

In the Ray Illingworth tour of Aus in 1971 which England won by 299 runs (Sydney) - Snow taking 7/40 in I2, Boycott contributed as much as Snow in the win. He top scored for England in both innings - First inning he scored 77 in a session and 27 minutes. Very good. Second innings was sheet anchor with 142 no in 6 hours breaking the back of Aussies.

 

BATTING		R	B	M	4s	6s	SR
Geoff Boycott	c Gleeson b Connolly	77	147	140	11	0	52.38

 

BATTING		R	B	M	4s	6s	SR
Geoff Boycott	not out	142	360	412	12	0	39.44

 

.

He played many such innings vs Aus from 1964 to 1981 despite the break from 1971-77 when he refused to play under Denness as captain.

 

Yes it looked slow by today's standards but comparing to then it was not. Here is the drawn match where he scored fast when he had to in Adelaide and compare with Ian Chappell and Stackpole and his teammates

 

BATTING		R	B	M	4s	6s	SR
Geoff Boycott	run out	58	161	175	6	0	36.02
John Edrich	c Stackpole b Lillee	130	301	354	14	0	43.18
Keith Fletcher	b Thomson	80	206	209	8	0	38.83

 

 

BATTING		R	B	M	4s	6s	SR
Geoff Boycott	not out	119	210	250	12	0	56.66

 

 

The Aussies did not bat much faster.

 

BATTING		R	B	M	4s	6s	SR
Keith Stackpole	b Snow	136	335	410	16	0	40.59
Bill Lawry (c)	c †Knott b Willis	21	93	96	2	0	22.58
Ian Chappell	c Willis b Underwood	104	278	326	9	0	37.41
Ian Redpath	not out	21	109	114	0	0	19.26
Doug Walters	not out	36	111	100	3	1	32.43

 

 

 

Boycott  averaged 47 vs Aus with 45 in Aus and 49 in England.  Gary Sobers in a similar period averaged 46 in Australia.

 

 

[Vijy]

12 minutes ago, Majestic said:

Root has scored a lot of runs in New Zealand, South Africa, Sri Lanka and UAE. His record has been poor since Bazball effect came into force, meaning Root the batsman has been destroyed with this effect.

 

He was obviously a beast in England, not only averages 53 at home but has won test series vs India and Australia with standout performance and also scored plenty of runs vs other teams like South Africa, Pakistan, New Zealand etc. The only question mark was his performance in Australia and now after the awful series he is having in India, he owes atleast one crucial knock by the end of the tour.

 

 

Root has a big blot. His Aus record. if he fixes it, he can outpace his contemporaries (barring smith) further.

 

however, my suspicion is that ASSball (bazball) will accelerate his downfall

Edited February 18 by Vijy

[AKane]

From an Aussie in their message board - paraphrased.

 

"Root has bowled more overs than scored runs in India this series".

 

I checked and .... YES

 

Root has bowled around 94 overs.

Root has scored 70 runs.

[Lord]

15 hours ago, Vijy said:

how is he even "arguably" the GOAT? even in post WW2 era, likes of hutton, compton, barrington are better than him comfortably. and KP and May are nearly his equal.

among the ones I saw, barrington was comfortably better than all Eng bats (did not see hutton & compton in post WW2).

 

you saw Barrington?

[putrevus]

Any player can have bad series. Root having bad series after lightning up for 2 years is understandable 

[LordPrabhzy]

5 hours ago, AKane said:

From an Aussie in their message board - paraphrased.

 

"Root has bowled more overs than scored runs in India this series".

 

I checked and .... YES

 

Root has bowled around 94 overs.

Root has scored 70 runs.

by not having 3 frontline spinners in the team they are grounding down Roots body to be effctive as sa batsmen. Kohli, Williamson or Smith dont bowl now so why cant England not keep Root for sending 2/3 overs here and there rather than nearly 100 overs in 3 tests- its madness. Same way they destroyed Archers test career by bover bowling him in Tests

[Vijy]

4 hours ago, Lord said:

 

you saw Barrington?

as a young kid, in the last 2-3 yr of his career.