Those crowning Joe Root as England’s greatest batsman are forgetting someone

Even after scoring 39 Test centuries, Joe Root was still defined by the hundred he had not scored. No longer. After 12 years of waiting, Root’s first century in Australia cements his place among the titans of the Test game. Really, he was already there: he is the second top Test run-scorer of all time.

But such feats do not make Root unarguably England’s greatest batsman. The rush to proclaim him the indisputable best of all-time betrays a certain amnesia – a natural tendency to anoint the modern, in whatever sphere of life, as the best. Root can simultaneously be extraordinary and not be English Test batting’s No 1.

The case against Root being England’s greatest is encapsulated by two numbers: one and nine. The first is Root’s tally of Test centuries in Australia; the second is the number of hundreds Down Under by Jack Hobbs.

“There is nothing like an Australian tour – nothing in all cricket,” Hobbs once said. His five Ashes tours from 1907-08 to 1928-29 underpin his claim to being England’s greatest batsman. Over these 22 years, England’s fortunes in Australia oscillated wildly, with twin 4-1 defeats and the ignominy of a whitewash balanced by two 4-1 victories.

Through all these shifts, Hobbs’s excellence was a constant. His Ashes apogee helped England regain the urn in 1911-12. After England lost the opening Test, Hobbs peeled off three match-shaping centuries in the middle three Tests: 126 not out to steer England’s chase of 219 in Melbourne, 187 in Adelaide and then 178 to set-up an innings victory back in Melbourne. Seventeen years later Hobbs hit 142 in Melbourne, at the age of 46 years and 82 days, setting a record for the oldest Test centurion that will surely never be surpassed.

No visiting player in history has ever scored more Test runs in Australia than Hobbs’s 2,493 or matched his haul of centuries there. While he averaged a stellar 57.97 in Australia, Root averages only 37.60 – and, in 16 attempts, has never come close to winning a single Test there. Hobbs’s pedigree is elevated further because he opened; openers average four runs fewer in Test cricket than those who bat at three and four.

For a country as preoccupied with the Ashes as England, Root’s record against Australia invites awkward questions about his status as England’s best ever. The journalist Jarrod Kimber’s recent book The Art of Battingranked the top 50 Test batsmen of all time. Root was judged England’s fifth-best, below not just Hobbs but also Len Hutton, Wally Hammond and Herbert Sutcliffe. One simple explanation is that against Australia, comfortably the best side in the world over Test history, Hobbs averaged 54.26, Hutton 56.46 (he was the 11th-highest run scorer so is not on the chart above), Hammond 51.85 and Sutcliffe 66.85. Root’s Ashes average sits at 41.09: perfectly solid, but not of the very top rank.

Root, of course, has had to contend with conditions that would have been unimaginable to these players. Where Hobbs only played in three countries, Root has played in 10; he averages 45 or more in eight of them. Root also has to contend with far faster bowling, innovations like reverse swing and the wobble seam and – as Josh Inglis’s run-out of Ben Stokes on the opening day in Brisbane illustrated – far more agile fielding.

Yet the evolution in the game ignores the range of challenges that Hobbs faced. He thrived both in the timeless Tests that were standard in Australia and in the three-day Tests that were the norm in England. Hobbs scored centuries away both to South Africa’s array of googly bowlers and Australia’s pair of rapid pace bowlers, Jack Gregory and Ted McDonald. He did all this, of course, without wearing a helmet, and with only rudimentary gloves. Arguably, the sense of physical danger facing bowlers around 80mph with 1920s equipment was greater than facing 90mph-plus bowlers today.

Hobbs dominated cricket’s Belle Époque – and then thrived in the next age too. He averaged nine runs more than anyone in the format’s history until the Great War, then excelled during the industrialised run-scoring of the 1920s too. The artist turned accountant.

Above all, Hobbs earned his sobriquet – “The Master” – for his performances in the most treacherous conditions. In the age of uncovered pitches, which remained in England until the 1970s, rain created “sticky wickets” with uneven bounce. One delivery would bounce towards a batter’s head, the next could then scuttle along the turf. Famously, even Don Bradman floundered in these conditions.

Not Hobbs. His classical technique and ease playing back, and very late, meant that he was renowned for his feats on sticky wickets. At the Oval in 1926, after overnight rain had created what the umpire would call “the worst sticky I have seen” Hobbs played one of the greatest Test innings of all. He initially took guard outside leg stump, to protect against being out lbw and open up the offside. Hobbs’s century defied Australia, before conditions eased for his team-mates. It was “the finest piece of batting I have ever seen,” Australia’s captain Herbie Collins declared. It helped England win the urn for the first time in 14 years.

Root, abetted by the modern schedule, has scored over 8,000 more runs than Hobbs. Yet Hobbs’s overall Test haul of 5,410 runs at 56.9 would have ballooned had the Great War not stopped him from playing a single Test between the ages of 31 and 38. Longevity can be measured in other ways, too: Hobbs’s career stretched over 22 years, nine more than Root has so far. Hobbs scored 199 first-class centuries; Root – here, a victim of the fixture list – has hit 54.

When Wisden chose their five cricketers of the century in 2000, Hobbs was the only Englishman to make the list. To consider Root a little below him is scarcely lesser praise than it is to proclaim Steve Smith as Australia’s best since Don Bradman.

Even in the age of Bazball, Root, surely would recognise Hobbs’s mantra as his own: “The secret of power and hitting is not so much muscular force as ease of swing and perfect timing.”

[Source: Daily Telegraph]