Joe Root owns an unwanted Test record. Imitating Tendulkar could get him back on track

The headlines from Joe Root’s press conference when England resumed their tour Down Under were about him calling into question the need to play a day-night Test in the Ashes, but the more revealing comment was one possibly aimed at himself.

“I know I’m a good player, I know I’m going to be able to score runs again,” he insisted when asked about his performance in Perth. That was the world’s No.1-ranked Test batsman speaking and one who is touring Australia on the back of a run-rich 2025 summer.

It shows how Ashes tours can be suffocating and that after one Test even a player of Root’s experience and natural modesty feels he has to assert that he can play, the result of past experiences haunting him. Don’t forget the tour started at Lilac Hill three weeks ago, with Ben Stokes being asked by an Australian journalist if he “still had faith” in Root, the second-highest run scorer in Test history.

His second innings dismissal in Perth was his 29th without a century and moved him past Dilip Vengsarkar as the batsman to have played the most in Australia without a hundred.

It is a damning statistic for a player of Root’s class, but worse than that for England, Root has played more Tests in Australia than anyone else without winning a game. The Gabba this week will be his 16th match in Australia. So far, he has drawn two, and Perth was his 13th defeat.

Root is the main character in a dark story for English cricket of miserable times in Australia since the 2010-11 win. As England completed their innings victory in Sydney – their last win on Australian soil – Root was preparing to play in the under-19s World Cup in New Zealand in a team captained by Azeem Rafiq that also included Ben Stokes, Jos Buttler and James Vince (19 winless away Ashes Tests between them).

Joe Root works on his game in Brisbane.Credit: Getty Images

Will it matter if Root does not score a century on this tour and England win? Not to him. What would be the value of a century in a defeat or draw if England lose the series? Not much to Root for, considering the team man that he is.

Root says he will not be changing his approach; publicly, few players admit to anything so dramatic. But there is a lesson from the past. Sachin Tendulkar did not play a single cover drive in his 241 not out in Sydney 21 years ago, after going 13 innings without a hundred, and the Australians dismissing him with balls outside off stump.

It was a flat Sydney pitch, and the Kookaburra quickly lost its zip in those days, but, nonetheless, Tendulkar resisted his natural instinct for nearly 10 hours not to score on the off side. It would go against this England team’s philosophy for Root to play a similar game, but maybe that is what is needed. The pink ball can go soft, and the pitch flatten out, there are times when Root could adopt a different strategy rather than be lulled into thinking it is destined to be a short, low-scoring shoot-out.

Perth increased the noise, especially because his two dismissals were familiar, and the long gap has left plenty of time to chew over it. At 99 for two when he came in, Root had an opportunity to emulate Virat Kohli a year ago and bag a third-innings hundred.

He decided not to play the pink-ball two-day game in Canberra, and it was probably a good choice. Jacob Bethell was pictured alongside Andrew Flintoff, covered with blankets to keep out the cold. It rained, and the bounce was low. Sam Konstas bowled his first ball in first-class cricket. It was going through the motions stuff and nothing close to a Test in hot and humid Brisbane.

The bounce at the Gabba will not be as dramatic as Perth, which has lured English batsmen to the rocks for decades. But Australia will play on Root’s dismissals in the first Test and dangle the tempter on fifth stump, knowing he likes to feel bat on ball and will wait for him to play his dab/punch on the off side that is his strength in England but weakness in Australia.

At home on faster and smaller outfields, those punches bring full value, but the Gabba outfield will be slow like Perth, and the shot will only bring one or tw,o which will play on his patience (the same goes for Ben Duckett, who has a similar issue) and questions its risk/reward value.

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“In England, that probably doesn’t carry; it drops short with soft hands,” said Root about his first-innings dismissal caught at slip. “It’s always easier to go from a high-bouncing place to a lower-bouncing place,” said Ian Chappell before the series. “I think that’s an easier adjustment to make.”

On his second innings in Perth, Root thought he was unlucky. “The way I started the second innings, being quite busy and proactive, was the right way to go. I just made a slight error of judgment, and it cost you. You could play and miss at that, or it goes between stumps and keeper and goes for four, and you never think about it again.”

His record at the Gabba is the story of his England career in Australia. He averages 36, not disastrous, but below standard for him. That hundred was within reach on the last tour. He made 89 in the second innings before edging Cameron Green behind on the fourth morning as England collapsed from 229 for three to 297 all out and lost later in the day by nine wickets.

If he had made another 11 runs, would it have mattered? Australia had to score only 20 in the second innings to win, and England would have lost anyway. But yes, it did matter. Those 11 runs would have lifted a burden off Root’s shoulders that he is carrying around on this tour. Arguably, it was more important for his own sake to score a hundred on previous trips than this one because right now the statistic that matters is him being on a winning side. If that does not change this week then it is all over for another tour.

Telegraph, London

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