Root, England’s middle order mainstay
Joe Root had an extended batting practice session at the Brabourne Stadium here on Friday. Whether it was of his own volition or the team management wanted him to make the most of the practice session before the opening Test at Rajkot, commencing on November 9, the relevance of Root to England’s scheme of things, following the collapse against Bangladesh in the Mirpur Test, was accentuated. After making a successful Test debut (73 and 20 not out) against India at Nagpur in 2012, the 25-year-old Root has shown the competitive steel to become England’s mainstay and this is amply reflected in his tally of 4103 runs in 88 Test match innings, with 10 centuries and 23 half-centuries. He has been most prolific against India, scoring 611 runs in six Test matches; five of them at home.
Root was the only England player in the middle for about half an hour, facing five off-break bowlers and watched by assistant coach Paul Fabrice and batting coach Mark Ramprakash.
The five off-spinners supplied by the Cricket Club of India (CCI) were a far cry from the Test match class of R. Ashwin, but clearly the objective was to get used to conventional finger spinners bowling over and round the wicket.
A round of selfies taken by the net bowlers with Root brought an end to England’s near four-hour work out at the Brabourne with the CCI offering the best facilities. Contrary to the initial information that only four or five England players would take the opportunity for an optional practice session, the entire team turned up, after taking a day’s rest.
While reactions to England coming a cropper against rookie off-spinner Mehedi Hasan and a stunning defeat have been mixed — with some lampooning its spinners, but someone as celebrated as Ian Botham observing that the real test will be in India — England has realised that it has to pull up its socks in order to counter India’s better spin resources in Ashwin, Ravindra Jadeja and Amit Mishra on slow turners.
England spent its first practice session facing a dozen spinners and one shot that was seen often was the horizontal sweep that Graham Gooch and Mike Gatting executed against Ravi Shastri and Maninder Singh in the 1987 World Cup semifinal.
England’s emphasis would be to execute the shot against off-spinner Ashwin and also play safely against left-armer Jadeja and leg-spinner Mishra.
Four years ago, Alastair Cook led from the front, making 41 and 176 at Motera, 122 and 18 not out at Mumbai and 190 at Kolkata, and as a result of his phenomenal show of temperament England won the Test series 2-1 after being beaten in the first Test.
While Cook would probably become the first England batsman to aggregate 1000 runs against India (he has 866 from eight matches so far), England would expect Root to bring stability to the middle order.
Root made 40, 1, 56, 1 in the two-Test series in Bangladesh and the five-Test series gives him a chance to prove his class in Indian conditions and emulate the likes of Cook, Gatting, Tony Greig, Kevin Pietersen, Ken Barrington, Keith Fletcher, Gooch, Ian Botham, Andrew Strauss, Graeme Fowler, Ted Dexter, Paul Collingwood. No England batsman has scored more than Root since the day he made his debut against India. Cook is second at 3585 from 91 innings.
England will go through a second full practice session at the Brabourne on Saturday morning before flying to Rajkot and prepare for the first Test at a new venue where Hyderabad left-arm spinner Mehdi Hasan took five for 43 and five for 69 against Saurashtra in the 2015 Ranji Trophy league match.
Source: The Hindu
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