Joe Root : The new Alistair Cook ? Or is it too early to call?
“He looks to me like a lad who has absolutely everything. He just looks to be the complete article. The only thing he needs now is experience to turn from a very good batsman into a brilliant one. It doesn’t appear to me that he has any obvious flaw in either his technique or his temperament. I think he is spectacular.”
Graeme Fowler, former England Batsman on Joe Root
Young cricketers are a difficult bunch to explain. In the international arena, young blood goes a long way in making or breaking a team’s fortunes.
Younger guys are, more often than not, better fielders, more energetic and more determined. That determination of course is for the sole purpose of stamping some sort of authority, to demand a permanent place in the side.
There is, of course, a two sided tale to the point I just made. Young guys do bring a lot to the dressing room, but they aren’t young only because of their age, are they?
Look at Virat Kohli, only 24 years old, but he is over a 100 ODI matches old already. There is some decent experience there. Granted that he did make his debut some 5 years ago, but still 24 is a very tender age nevertheless. Experience makes up a major aspect of the ‘age’ factor – the more experienced you are, the more valuable are you to the team.
The current scenario in world cricket or any other team sport, is the promotion of youth players. The performances of the youth in a team, if praiseworthy, make it much easier for the team to replace the old guard with the new, and thus secure the future of the team in that sport.
Domestic competitions are used as the base for selection and at times the performances in ‘A’ team tours or junior leagues go a long way in making or breaking a young aspirant’s dreams.
Younger players today find more opportunities of getting into the senior team. The emergence of numerous T20 leagues across the world helps them in coming into the picture sooner rather than later, opportunities our predecessors didn’t have. Their performances, if noteworthy, helps them in making that transition to the world stage much smoother.
In this article I will talk about one such young man who worked his way through junior domestic championships to reach the senior team, and it is very likely that this young man is going to be an integral part of his team’s fortunes in the future.
This one ‘young’ man goes by the name of Joe Root. Root, over the past few months, has been grabbing the headlines for almost all the right reasons (the David Warner incident is hopefully, a one-off incident) ever since he made his sparkling Test debut. I put young within inverted commas simply because of his level of maturity. He is, for me, the real life example of ‘old head on young shoulders’.
Joe Root is a young English batsman hailing from Yorkshire. He made his Test debut against India is December last year at Nagpur (as part of my comparison, I’d like to point out that Alistair Cook too made his debut against India in Nagpur as well), a series where England emerged the unlikely winners, and Joe Root the unlikely hero debutante.
In an article sometime back I highlighted that the Ashes, since time immemorial, has had a special ritual, a ritual the world easily recognizes. That ritual is the signaling of a new and upcoming talent, a talent that could, someday, carry the weight of expectation of the whole nation in cricket.
Joe Root is my pick for the hero of the future for England, and at the moment he is living up to all those expectations.
Joe Root was always destined for great things; his junior coaches always praised his ability to concentrate for long periods of time and accumulate runs easily. They said he could very well be the next Boycott, the same man who was praised for his inhumane ability to stay at the crease for long periods of time.
Joe Root’s performances for England and Yorkshire over the past few months have earned him a place in the Ashes side, replacing Nick Compton as an opener. This selection is an achievement in itself, and what is more important for him is the quality interaction he is having with his mentor, Alistair Cook himself. He has earned immense praise from his team-mates and coaches. English legends too have earmarked this young man for greatness.
Jimmy Anderson said this about him recently- “The biggest thing about Joe is that the mental side of the game is easy for him. I’ve never seen someone that young have what you need to be able to perform at that level”.
Anderson’s show of respect for this young man goes a long way. Anderson started his international career as a mildly popular domestic cricketer, and even though his talent was apparent,the results weren’t coming his way. This only fortified the fact that he was nervous when he was first brought onto the world stage, and it had rattled him. Though Joe Root looks much more used to this new found attention, the national team and its burdens don’t faze this young man.