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Few birthdays carry the anxiety of the 30th.
It’s an age dismissed as old before you get there and young – actually – when you arrive. An opportunity to take stock and check through your achievements to assess if you are where you expected to be. If that’s not a dispiriting endeavour then can count yourself very lucky.
Things are slightly different for athletes, though not by much. They, too, assess where they are at, an exercise helped by their professional accomplishments being that little bit more pronounced than ours. Not to mention that in most sports there’s a “right” and “wrong” side of 30, and it’s pretty obvious which is which.
On Wednesday, while the rest of the country had their sights set on the calendar to ensure 2020 really was no more, English cricket’s own Milky Bar Kid ticked over into the “wrong” side. It seems only yesterday Joe Root arrived as the next hope of English cricket, the tyke-iest of Yorkshire batsmen skipping into our lives, translucent blonde hair, playing the ball late under those beautiful blues. Typically, no sooner had he come into our lives that we look up and, just like that, he’s on 30.
Except, that’s not really how things have played out, and certainly not how it has felt. Since Root became a known quantity in 2010, when others imposed future greatness onto him two years before a Test debut, there have been many stops, many shifts and many changes.
A wunderkind batsman, a top-tier tempo-driver and now a facilitator. A middle-order cog, an opener, a number three, a number four, a number three again and then back to number four. A future England captain, a vice and, for the last three years, the leader outright. In every guise, he has thrilled, underwhelmed, won and lost. Above all other cricketers who have tread a similar path, it does feel like we’ve gone through that all with him.
“I’m waiting for my hair to fall out,” he joked about moving into his 30s. But what preoccupies his mind is not what remains intact but what he has given up. The 17 Test hundreds, 7,823 runs and title as Test captain are far beyond the majority, yet the 49 unconverted 50s and an average that has dipped under 48 from the heights of 52 are elements to rectify in older age.
“I certainly hope so,” Root said, when asked if these post-30 years will bring about an upturn. “I’ve been working as hard as ever to make that be the case. As a player you’re always trying to evolve and improve.”
No one has scored more than his 3,229 runs since he became Test captain in February 2017. Though we should vie that figure alongside 79 innings, the most of anyone and 14 more than the next active player, Ben Stokes, this period coincides with a rise in high-quality Test bowling. This has not been an era to pick up scores just by turning up.
The issue has not expressly been “form”, specifically the vagaries of judgement and technique, but a degree of immaturity. Root recognises as much, maligning the false starts but not too harshly to do down his status as the country’s premier bat. “One thing you’re always going to gain is experience and further knowledge of the game itself and your own individual game, how you manage situations.”
Conventional sporting wisdom is on his side. Batting, like golf, goalkeeping and long-distance swimming is an example of individual pursuits that showcase upward trends with age.
There are a few reasons for this. Some say the more life you live, the greater context you can apply when dealing with professiona; disappointments. Others believe that exiting the carefree 20s narrows your focus with the realisation you are entering a decade where most athletes call it quits. Root’s mindset seems to be of the latter, particularly around turning more half-centuries to full ones.
“In terms of conversion rate, it’s a mental thing. I have to make sure when I get to 50 I get greedy, selfish and make those starts count. I have to keep working hard to get in those positions, knowing I’m a good enough player to turn them into match-winning contributions.
“I’ve just got to try to pull all of that together and give myself the best chance to go on and make scores – and just really enjoy the game and enjoy my batting as much as possible. I’ll certainly try and do that.”
So, where does the captaincy feature in all of this? Probably just as it always has with Root. As an aside that he’s coping with a little better each time. A distraction he entertains so as to not burden the others. 2020 is a pretty neat snapshotof this: a year that saw him go without defeat, winning series in South Africa and at home to West Indies and Pakistan, and also without a hundred for the first time since he registered his first cap at the end of 2012.
It remains a toll of the Big Player Tax all England’s best batsmen have had to pay at one time, and one Root has forked out for during his late 20s. English cricket’s schoolboy vibe of anointing the best player as skipper through a belief that the best way to lead is by example.
His sense of humour has been restricted to the bar. A cavalier attitude in the contest of 22-yards is now played solely with the bat rather than the playful smirks and winks that used to trigger the gnarly and reserved quicks in equal measure. All traits now under lock and key while an authority figure. A batsman who was mastering a craft that requires the utmost selfishness has been distracted by occupational selflessness.
The next decade is clouded by what he might achieve as a leader in 2021. Series away and home to India and an Ashes in Australia all carry rewards but more callous judgement on the man above the player for eternity. For now, Root’s outlook over what lies immediately ahead is one of optimism.
“When you think about this team, it’s starting to go on a real upward curve … the next couple of series will be a really good gauge of where we are as a team and as captain you want to lead by example. In terms of motivation, there’s plenty there for me to go out and produce some big scores.”
These are of course the right things to say. But it would have been pretty funny if Root vocalised a desire to regress. To reclaim the early abandon and impunity that granted him access to the Big Four of Kohli, Smith and Williamson at 25, exorcising the subdued, responsible one that has seen his membership revoked by 30. The elbow remains high, the feet still nimble, the ball still played under those eyes, even if they are deeper set and the blues a little duller. All the elements are there for a fruitful mid-life crisis.
As he stands right now on 97 caps and haul of 7,823, there’s no reason he cannot tick off Sir Alastair Cook’s 161 and 12,472. That won’t be achieved through captaining or thriving off the younger players around him. But by going against the grain and rediscovering his youth.
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