Stop me if you’ve heard this before: Joe Root has not made a Test hundred in Australia. No, really, look it up. It is the fact of the moment, to scrutinise, analyse, harp on and even chortle over.
On the eve of these Ashes, the century Root has not made is believed to count more than the 39 Test tons that he has.
“Average Joe”: thus the headline in The West Australian over a front-page photograph of Root behind his luggage cart at Perth Airport, with the additional information that his average in two previous Tests in this city is 14, entitling him to the epithet “Dud Root”.
Surely, in fact, few locals will miss the opportunity to rub it in. The barista at his coffee house: “Your macchiato might be a while, Mr Root – a bit like your first Test century here…” The receptionist at his hotel: “Room 35, Mr Root. You’ll remember it as your Test average in Australia…”
So far, so routine. Back in the day, Perth was also the first stop for English teams arriving by ship. They would be greeted by customs official Ernie Jones – once a Merv Hughes-esque fast bowler alleged to have sent a ball through WG Grace’s beard – who would roar from his row boat: “We’ll tan the flamin’ hide off ya!”
It’s an iron law: in Australia it can feel like you are taking on not just a cricket team but a country as well
In his autobiography, Wally Hammond described the youthful kibbitzers around the Perth nets, including an eight-year-old who “clicked his tongue in despair” as he appraised the visitors’ bowling: “I’d rap the pickets with that myself, Pommy; you’ll never move Bradman with that stuff!”
Now perhaps it will be a little more incessant coming, as it were, under the hotel room door via TikTok, Instagram, Facebook et al.. But it’s an iron law: in Australia it can feel like you are taking on not just a cricket team but a country as well.
The Ashes quarrel especially slides readily into tit for tat, then tat for tit, then tit for tat for tit, and before you know it you’re back to original sin: Bodyline, Gallipoli, what have you.
Scratch the surface, and the Ashes’s antagonists have a seemingly infinite capacity for irritating one another. Bazball? Pronounce it “Baz Bawl”, insists The West Australian, in reference to the spittle-flecked English rage during and after the Lord’s Test in 2023. The English have countered with Dad’s Army. Who do you think you are kidding, Mr Cummins, with your ancient team and mix-and-match top six?
How, then, should England deal with such sly Australian psy-ops? It already feels like the visitors have missed a trick with their self-involved preparation – like readying for an FA Cup final with a bit of intraclub kickabout. The contrast with Australia, 13 of whose 14-man squad earlier this week threw themselves into the Sheffield Shield’s tough grind, could hardly be greater.
With its early dawns, brilliant skies and dry heats, Perth is a shock to the system at any time. Nor will England’s adjustment be helped by the picturesque, out-of-the-way setting of Lilac Hill, for here’s something it can be hard to appreciate from far away: England play home Tests at cricket grounds; Australia play home Tests at Australian rules football grounds temporarily allocated to cricket. That’s before we even get to the pitches, as slow at Lilac Hill as they have in Australia this summer been quick.
So the trick will be to get excited about those differences, to treat the tour as the big adventure that it is, to celebrate every success in order to ride out each failure – unlike England’s last three Ashes squads, who approached their tasks with all the enthusiasm of death-row prisoners.
The last English winners here, Andrew Strauss’s team in 2010-11, did not succeed merely because of their embrace of the experience and sense of humour. But these qualities came to the fore in the face of the unavoidable pressure and setbacks. They moved on fast. Being monstered in Perth did not dissuade Strauss from sending Australia in a week later and thereby winning big.
As remembered last week by team member Steve Finn, now here with the BBC: “We were clearly a fantastic team, but we looked to embrace being in Australia. We didn’t hide away; we’d go to restaurants, we’d go to a bar and have a drink. We just embraced being there and being in what is an amazing country. It’s the best tour.”
Ben Stokes’s team have the talent to take it to Australia. In 2023, treating the 0-2 like a gauntlet thrown down, they nearly won the series. They have, however, had trouble reproducing that resilience, with a tendency to self-confident surges then self-excusing capitulations. Here is the visitors’ opportunity, then, to redefine themselves, in others’ eyes and their own.
They should not underestimate, either, how much the Australian public welcome a visitor with the courage and nerve to succeed in these conditions.
Stokes has all the form to be a hugely popular captain in this country; he simply needs the substance. Harry Brook could win a Test in a session. Jofra Archer is an opponent worthy of Steve Smith’s mettle.
A year ago, The West Australian fawned all over Virat Kohli, before and after he peeled off a hundred in Perth. Wouldn’t it be something for a Root hundred to demand new idioms of the headline writers? “Joe Cool.” “Root Cause.” “Rooted to the spot.” Or even, simply: “Rooted.”
At the end of every day’s play in Australia, Gideon Haigh’s report will appear promptly on The Observer website and app.
Photograph by Gareth Copley/Getty Images