Andy Zaltzman: Root and Bumrah will live long in the memory

Weekly stat No 1: From his debut in 2012-13 until the end of the 2020 Test summer, Joe Root converted 17 of his 66 Test fifties into centuries, the 10th-worst conversion rate of the 50 players who made at least 10 fifty-plus scores in that period. Since the 2020-2021 international season, Root has converted 20 of his 37 half-centuries into hundreds, the third-best conversion rate of the 34 players who have reached fifty 10 times.

Weekly stat No 2: At the end of England’s first innings at Lord’s, Jasprit Bumrah had already bowled out seven players in his three innings this series. Since 1994, when Curtly Ambrose dismissed 10 England players bowled in the West Indies, there has been only one instance of a pace bowler taking more England wickets in a series via bowled dismissals – Bumrah, in the 2021-22 series (bowled nine).

The first half of the Lord’s Test was a classic 2020s cocktail of cricketing brilliance swirling around among the recurring blights of a somnolent pitch, hopelessly inadequate balls, and a sub-funereal pace of play, fuelled by umpires who seemed to have been instructed to move at the slowest conceivable speed, presumably in order to avoid waking any sleeping flocks of badgers that may be roosting under  the Lord’s square.

In between the impromptu massage breaks for hurty fielders, changes of one squidged mess of ball for another, and assorted micro-interval stoppages, two of the game’s undisputed great players showcased their magnificence again.

Joe Root has been an elite player for well over a decade. His first innings at Lord’s was the 103rd time he has reached 50 in Tests. Only Sachin Tendulkar has made more fifty-plus scores in Test cricket (119 of them), and Root is now level with Ricky Ponting and Jacques Kallis.

Until 2020, the major glitch in his phenomenal statistics was his poor conversion rate. In 2021, his last full year as captain, he produced heroic resistance in a repeatedly beaten team – 1,708 runs, with six hundreds out of 10 fifty-plus innings, as many centuries as he had scored in the previous four calendar years combined.

His innings at Lord’s was ended minutes after reaching three figures by the universe’s leading bowler, as Jasprit Bumrah, having bowled Harry Brook on the first evening and Ben Stokes on the second morning, flattened Root’s middle stump via a thin inside edge.

Bumrah became the 16th player ever to hit the stumps of Nos 4, 5 and 6 in the same innings in men’s Test cricket, and the fourth to do so against England. Only one other bowler has achieved this rare feat in the past 100 years, since Australian pace demon Ted McDonald timbered England to smithereens at Lord’s in 1921 – Australian left-arm spinner Ray Bright, at Edgbaston in 1981, in a stat that may surprise even Bright himself.

Bright’s achievement received minimal attention due to (a) being overshadowed by Ian Botham winning the match with a spell of 5 for 1, and (b) a lack of 2020s-level computers that has reduced the statistical task of looking up such things to a couple of minutes, rather than days alone in a specially-insulated cubicle with the Wisden Book Of Test Cricket.

The fact that Bumrah’s victims included the current Nos 1 and 2 in the ICC world men’s Test batting rankings adds further lustre to his unique brilliance.

In a series of bowler-antagonistic pitches, he has hit the stumps seven times, at a rate of once every 10.1 overs. All the other bowlers in the series (on average up to tea yesterday) have hit the stumps once per 50 overs.

Brook and Root were joined as England Players With More Than 1,000 Test Runs At An Average Of More Than 50 by Jamie Smith, whose stunning early career continued with a match-shifting half-century. He reached 1,000 Test runs in his 21st innings, the joint fewest taken by a wicketkeeper to reach that landmark (Quinton de Kock of South Africa also reached 1,000 in his first 21 innings when selected as keeper).

The last time England had three players with more than 1,000 runs at an average of more than 50 was in early 1947, at the Adelaide Oval (the three players then were Len Hutton and Wally Hammond, two of England’s all-time batting greats, and Nottinghamshire’s Joe Hardstaff Jnr, who was averaging more than 50 before dropping to more mortal 46 by the end of his career).

What would they make of this summer’s cricket, if Elon Musk had devoted his techno-wizardry to building a cricket-specialising time machine? Root’s classical mastery would no doubt be familiar. Bumrah would be even more mind-blowing than he is to us. Rishabh Pant would be inexplicable. But the over rates might be the biggest bafflements.

Photograph by Ben Stansall via AFP/Getty Images