Savour every one of Joe Root’s runs until he puts away his bat

Had they held their catches in the first Test at Headingley, India would have brought a 2-1 lead to Manchester. Now, if wind drives away the showers that give this city its reputation, they will surrender the series with a match to play, after England closed their first innings on 669, and a lead of 311.

One butterfly has danced for our pleasure; an absolute Monarch. At a ground that has never been mistaken for an enchanted garden, the most beautiful batsman of the day took his quill to the crease and signed his name with a flowing hand. “Joe Root,” read the declaration. “Cricketer, Sheffield.” As if we didn’t know.

Cricketer, and mountaineer. Everest alone stands between Root and immortality; the peak called Sachin Tendulkar, who made the first of his 51 Test centuries on this ground 35 years ago, five months before Root was born.

The Indian master collected 15,921 runs in Tests. Root, who moved past Jacques Kallis, Rahul Dravid and Ricky Ponting during his professorial innings of 150, needs another 2,512 to match Tendulkar. It’s a bit steeper than a Pennine rockface, but he’s got his climbing boots on and is in no mood to surrender ground gained.

This was his second century in successive matches, 38th in Tests, and 12th against these opponents. He also became the first man to score 1,000 Test runs at Old Trafford, quite a claim for a Yorkie to make. Still cherubic, after all these years, the Darling of Dore is waxing, not waning. Two more productive years may yet see him plant a pole at the summit.

It will be no hardship watching him try. The cheeky lad who began his Test life so April-hearted has eased into the autumn of his years, and that is often the most exquisite season. Of one thing we may be sure: his “autumn almanac” will extend to something more sapid than tea and toasted, buttered currant buns.

Where he ranks in the pantheon of English batsmen is a matter of some debate, and difficult to resolve satisfactorily, because we have to take his predecessors on trust. Phrases such as “greatest of all time”, trotted out to honour players who may have scored more runs or taken more wickets, have little application. Though it doesn’t stop them receiving knighthoods.

It’s fair to say the “holy trinity” of Sir Jack Hobbs, Wally Hammond and Sir Leonard Hutton will always take precedence, and those greybeards who remember Denis Compton and Peter May in their post-war prime may not accept that Root outranks them. “Lord” Ted Dexter could play a bit, too, and Graham Gooch made an imperishable mark.

No matter. Nobody of sound mind can doubt Root has achieved a greatness in his day as surely as those masters did in theirs. It is a notable gathering, and he is of the company.

Other masters came to mind on the second afternoon, when he offered a generous selection from his repertoire. In this mood, when he marries supreme skill to the relaxation that comes from years of hard-won experience, he appears to have the measure of all things.

His is an expertise that reaches beyond sport. Think of Frank Sinatra, say, singing Mood Indigo, or Miles Davis leading his star sextet through Flamenco Sketches. The cold water of Root’s maturity is pumped from a similar spring. Until he was stumped when he lost his balance he looked as safe as Fort Knox.

Figures may be useful – in Zak Crawley’s case, they are damning – but they can never tell the whole tale. Root has not earned his exalted place through weight of runs alone. The way he makes them has endeared him to those who believe beauty, though unquantifiable, is also an element of greatness.

Ken Tynan, the cricket-loving theatre critic, was not the only observer to interpret the game through the filter of a creative imagination. But few put it more clearly. He would rather watch Neil Harvey make 20, he wrote of the Australian left-hander, “than Winston Place of Lancashire make a century”.

That’s as good a judgement as any of what makes cricket memorable. Who would not prefer to watch Root bat for a golden hour than see Kallis grind his way to one of those monumental centuries? A matter of taste, you say? It’s more a matter of judgement.

Tynan lived long enough to ­witness the flowering of David Gower, another left-hander with a rich palette. Of English batsmen from the recent past we can add the names of Colin Cowdrey, Tom Graveney and Michael Vaughan, who all played strokes that satisfied the aesthetic instinct.

Few batsmen have been ­cherished so dearly as Root, whose every entrance brings the promise of a summer with a thousand Julys. Right now he couldn’t be convicted if he posed beneath a “wanted” poster clutching a smoking pistol. No jury in the kingdom would send down a chap who provides so much pleasure.

It is not, however, a beauty that draws attention to itself. Root carries his gift with modesty, and a collegiate sense which endears him to his team-mates. We don’t have to go back too far to find a batsman of explosive talent who was booted out of the England team for trying to pass himself off as an emperor.

Having relinquished the captaincy three years ago, Root has given Stokes his full support, and supplied a senior pro’s example. Harry Brook, stumped here 12 balls into the kind of innings that disappoints his admirers, cannot fail to absorb some useful lessons. “I give the first half hour to the bowlers,” many a fine batsman has said. It remains advice worth heeding.

Crawley, Ben Duckett and Ollie Pope feasted on some wayward Indian bowling to make forceful half-centuries. “Those are our runs he’s making,” they may have said as they watched Root show them how. Then they had to see their captain add a century of his own, to accompany the five wickets he captured.

Stokes, through his volcanic personality, has been the player of this series. The man who couldn’t raise a gallop last winter has bowled with fire, and showed his men the way to go. He batted with care at Lord’s, as though he half-believed those who doubted him, and his innings of 141 here revealed his purpose. This is a serious man.

Root is no less serious, however he masks his intent within a cloth of velvet. Gosh, he’s good. So we must savour every run, until he puts his bat away. Root of Sheffield: mighty like a knockout, mighty like a rose.

Photograph by Stu Forster/Getty Images