One of Test cricket’s great, yet curiously forgotten teams was the South Africa side from 2006-15, who went an extraordinary nine years undefeated in Test series away from home. But South Africa lacked what every Test side craves: a great all-rounder, who could come close to justifying their place with both bat and ball.
Instead, normally at number seven, they fielded JP Duminy: a batsman who could bowl a little off spin. Duminy didn’t even bowl in his first two Tests, but morphed into a vital insurance policy: able to give the frontline bowlers a break, providing insurance if South Africa misread a pitch and being used more prominently in Asia. No one would mistake Duminy for an all-rounder, but his 42 wickets in 46 Tests at an average of 38.1 amounted to a crucial facet of South Africa’s adaptability.
The Duminy lesson, perhaps, is that for all of the focus on bowlers who can bat – significance highlighted by Jofra Archer, with a Test average of eight, batting in the same position in Ahmedabad – the importance of batsmen who can bowl is often overlooked. Such cricketers, who typically bowl the most derided type of bowling – orthodox off spin – can strengthen a team just as much as bowlers capable of lower-order runs.
It was a lesson that has seldom been so brilliantly distilled as by Joe Root at the Narendra Modi Stadium. A combination of tantalising footmarks for spinners to bowl into, Jack Leach’s excellence, the relative impotence of England’s seamers and the selection of only one frontline spinner convinced Root to whisk himself into the attack in the 42nd over of India’s innings.
His very first ball produced off spinning perfection. Against Rishabh Pant – the batsman most capable of decisively shaping the course of this match in an hour at the crease – Root drifted the ball into the footmarks outside his off stump, pitched the ball on a perfect length and found enough turn to graze Pant’s outside edge.
The 26 balls that Joe Root took to take his four wickets is the shortest time – in balls bowled – for an England spinner to take four since Graeme Swann took 25 balls, v SL in May 2011. #INDvENG
— The CricViz Analyst (@cricvizanalyst) February 25, 2021
It set the template for a wonderful, incredulous spell of bowling. Before Root had even conceded a run, he had bowled Washington Sundar, another left-hander with a sumptuous delivery that pitched on middle stump and then uprooted the top of his off stump, and snared Axar Patel driving to short cover with a ball that held in the surface.
By the time Root was done with his spell, India were done with their innings: Root had claimed an incredulous 5-8 from 6.2 overs, his first ever five-wicket haul in first-class, let alone Test, cricket. Test cricket in India can occasionally throw up extraordinary analyses – think of Michael Clarke taking 6-9 with his left-arm spin in 2004 – but this was a performance brimming with possibilities for England’s future too.
Root is not about to become a bona fida all-rounder, but his off spin has now claimed 37 Test wickets at a very respectable 41.2 apiece. Given the likelihood that Ben Stokes will bowl less in the future, Root could go some way to helping England make-up for some of Stokes’s overs.
This winter, he has now taken eight wickets at under 10 apiece, and conceded just 2.2 an over, showing good control for a part-timer. While Root will never have the control to be relied on to deliver 15 overs a day, he generates appreciable turn: throughout his Test career, Root generates 3.6 degrees of turn on average, fractionally below Dom Bess’s 3.7 degrees.
But for England’s development, most important of all is that Root’s strengths perfect complement those of Jack Leach. Yet for all the fine impression that Leach has made he has proved noticeably less effective against left-handers. So far in his Test career, Leach’s fine average of 24.3 to right-handers swells to 51.4 against left-handers.
It was instructive that Root bowled himself on to Pant, and that his first three wickets were all left-handers. The notion of match-ups – bowling the optimal bowler to a particular batsman, based on the particular strengths of the bowling attack and the weaknesses of the batsman – is increasingly permeating Test cricket, just as it has already done the shorter formats. Like almost all off spinners, Root fares better to left-handers, as the off break turns away from them. But just as Leach is unusual for a left-arm spinner in how much he prefers right-handers, so Root is unusual in how much he favours left-handers. He now averages 59.9 against right-handers, but just 25.2 against left-handers. This all suggests that Root should be prompter in bowling himself when England are being held up by a left-hander to two.
All of this makes the case for Leach to be England’s long-term first-choice Test spinner even greater. When Dom Bess was entrusted with the role, Root’s bowling was almost redundant: he was merely the second-choice off spinner, offering a part-time version of what Bess does.
One happy by-product of selecting Leach is it means that Root’s auxiliary off spin becomes much more significant in strengthening the side. So this may yet prove much more than a wonderful spell which brought England back into the Test series, but also a significant one for England’s long-term development.
