Magnificence of Joe Root and the befuddling mystery of India’s missing spinner

The Old Trafford Test proved, among other things, the wisdom of the age-old cricketing saying: “A team who, having endured a soul-crushingly narrow defeat in a pivotal third Test and then seen their talismanic keeper suffer a serious foot injury, concede 669 runs to an opposition containing one player who has vaulted from fifth to second in the all-time Test run-scoring record in the space of an almost supernaturally serene 150, and another who has become only the sixth England player (four men, two women) to make a century and take a five-wicket haul in the same Test, is quite likely to fall to 0 for 2 in the first over of its second innings.”

In the first 10 sessions of the Test, England put together a near-perfect display of precision positivity, in the face of which India deflated, crumpled and, at times in the field, seemingly evaporated. A recovery began with Shubman Gill and KL Rahul setting a new record for Highest Third Wicket Partnership Which Began At 0 For 2, meaning that the possibility of a genuine non-rain-affected draw began to hove into view.

Joe Root is one of the finest cricketers of this millennium, and indeed of the current geological epoch. He currently resides in one of the purplest patches of his magnificent, record-breaking, landmark-shredding career.

Only two other players in Test history have scored seven hundreds in a 10 Test sequence against a specific team in a specific country. Sunil Gavaskar, India’s greatest opener, did so in the West Indies from March 1971 to March 1983, and Donald Bradman, undisputed greatest batter in the history of all known universes, did likewise for Australia in England from July 1934 to July 1948 (including one Test in which he was unable to bat due to injury). When a cricketer appears in a stat alongside Bradman, it is a sign that they are Unusually Good At Batting. (Unless the stat is Average In Debut And Final Tests combined, in which Bradman – 6.3, from debut scores of 18 and 1, plus his career-ending duck at the Oval in 1948 – lies tied 2,119th in men’s cricket, alongside Ryan Sidebottom.)

Ravi Jadeja is also one of the finest cricketers of the millennium. He is one of 11 players in Test history to achieve the double of 3,000 runs and 300 wickets. His career batting average – 36.8 (after the first innings at Old Trafford) is the second best of those 11, behind Imran Khan’s 37.6. Jadeja’s career bowling average, 25.0, is lower than that of Shane Warne.

Other than Jadeja, it is Imran and Australia’s post-war swashbuckler Keith Miller who are the only players in Test history with more than 2,500 runs at an average above 33, as well as 150-plus wickets at an average below 28. But Jadeja is not an effective bowler in England – 34 wickets, average 48.7, in 16 Tests, and just 18 at 53.8 in the most recent 11 of those games. Jadeja’s all-round brilliance, I think, skews India’s selection, leading to the curious but fiercely protected Indian tradition of omitting their most dangerous spinner when playing in England – Ashwin in all four Tests in 2021, in the delayed fifth Test in 2022, and the World Test final against Australia in 2023, Kuldeep in the four Tests this series.

They accessorised this tradition by holding back Washington Sundar, fresh from his four for 22 at Lord’s, until England were past 300, his Ashwinian bowling mannerisms as he dismissed Pope and Brook mocking India’s reluctance to “risk” playing a bowler who finished his Test career with 537 wickets at 24.

There is, of course, no guarantee that Ashwin or Kuldeep would have prospered. Root had a superb individual record against Ashwin in India (366 for 6, much better than his 230 for 6 head-to-head record against Jadeja in India). Ashwin played seven Tests in England, taking 18 wickets at an average of 28.1. In Tests in England since the start of the 1970s, 49 spinners have bowled 1,000 or more balls, of whom only two – Warne and Muttiah Muralitharan, the two leading wicket-takers of Test history – have a lower average.

Seven Tests and 18 wickets is a small statistical sample, but it suggests that India may have missed numerous Tests’ worth of tricks by omitting him so often in England.

Kuldeep does not have the mountainous weight of wicket-laden evidence that Ashwin could waggle in selectors’ faces, but he took 19 wickets at 20.1 in four Tests against England in India early last year, is a left-arm wrist spinner, the rarest of bowling styles, a competent and dogged lower-order bat, an intense competitor, and, before play each morning, has been spinning the ball spectacularly in practice.

Without access to the parallel universe in which Ashwin and Kuldeep were selected in at least some of the matches in which Indian captains were seen scratching their chin thinking, “If only I had an elite, highly-skilled unorthodox spinner to bowl at this critical juncture,” we will never know how much difference their presence would have made. But in a series in which medium-paced bowling has been almost remorselessly ineffective, for India to prefer two medium-pacers over their potential series-changing wild card will befuddle for the rest of eternity.

Photograph by Gareth Copley/Getty Images