Joe Root’s century leaves England in command against West Indies
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Version 0 of 1. St George’s Day in St George’s was blessed with a sun-drenched ground bedecked with the red cross of England’s patron saint. It was the 451st anniversary of the Bard’s birth too. What finer day or more propitious occasion could there be to do something no Englishman has ever done and celebrate it with a Test match century. For a while it looked as if that man might be Alastair Cook for the England captain had batted with determined composure through 65 overs of the innings until he was out for 76, not long after lunch. Instead the hundred came from Joe Root, as English as roast beef and Yorkshire as the pudding that goes with it, who made a scintillating unbeaten 118, an innings full of youthful joy with 13 fours and two sixes. It was chanceless, precise and assembled with such timing on a surface that had flummoxed pretty much everyone who had batted on it before him that he might have been using an atomic clock where others were still on the sundial. When he eased Kemar Roach to the third man boundary and then back cut him for another boundary two balls later, he reached his sixth Test match hundred, and his first away from home. Earlier, when he had reached 81 undefeated, it meant that since he was omitted for the final Test in Sydney 16 months ago, he had scored 1,000 runs at an average of 100. That is some turn around from a young batsman of the highest class no matter the opposition. For 41 overs Root batted in the company of his fellow Yorkshire batsman Gary Ballance, scorer of a fine hundred himself in the first Test in Antigua, and with whom he shared a century partnership. The two complement each other well: one right-handed the other left; one, Ballance, an inveterate carver through the offside, his pal a player all round the wicket off front and back foot. This time the partnership for the fourth wicket was worth 165, during which another hundred for Ballance was a hot favourite. He, though, got too excited by a delivery that Marlon Samuels sent towards the stratosphere, tried to hit it for more than six and became the third person in the day to drag the ball on to his stumps. His 77 took 188 balls but it was more fluent than that. He hit eight fours and a pulled six. Cook is playing snakes and ladders so that just when there had started to seem an inevitability about his hundred he slid down once more. The pace bowler Shannon Gabriel is brisk and was getting the beginnings of some erratic bounce, mostly on the low side. He banged the ball in back of a length, it skidded on, Cook tried to chop it away in a fashion that in the course of this innings made him his country’s second highest Test match run scorer, and succeeded only in deflecting it on to his stumps from the under edge. So, if the past year or so has scarcely been Much Ado About Nothing for him, and A Comedy Of Errors at times, it is not yet time to stage All’s Well That Ends Well, although it was his fourth half- century in his last seven Test innings during which he had started to look more comfortable and synchronised in his movement. The opening stand of 125 that he shared with Jonathan Trott was remarkably, given the reputation West Indies have gained, the first they have conceded for that wicket in 39 matches since Tillakaratne Dilshan and Tharanga Paranavitana managed it in the second innings in Galle in November 2010. Trott made 59 in which, following his twin failures against Jerome Taylor and the new ball in Antigua, he started to find his sea legs again if not to bat with his former fluency. Gabriel, in particular, gave him some good ducking practice, which might serve him well in the coming summer, and he worked the legside as is his wont, as well as hitting the shot of the morning, a beautifully timed on-drive down the ground, the first authentic boundary of the day after more than an hour. The legspinner Devendra Bishoo had been settling into an excellent spell, though, getting a modicum of sideways spin but, with his overspin as well, gaining some bounce, which Cook in particular was working hard to combat. Now Trott drove at one with a little more flight but edged it sharply to Jerome Blackwood,, standing like a greyhound in the slips, who took the catch well. There is little to be said of the rest of the batting. Ian Bell, looking to force without getting the pace or bounce of the pitch, attempted to drive off the back foot with an angled bat and the under edge sent the ball on to his offstump and the crowd in the party stand into paroxysms of ecstasy (licks with the bat and flying stumps are the lifeblood of the Caribbean game). There was nothing to come from the lower middle order either, with Root almost running Moeen Ali out before he had faced a ball and then Moeen doing the job perfectly well himself with no help at all. Ben Stokes then tried to flay the longest of long hops from Bishoo and holed out to deep midwicket, a moment that gave Samuels an opportunity to salute the all-rounder as he departed the field following their first-innings spat. The drive to a total from which England might hope to put pressure on West Indies must now come from Root and Jos Buttler. |