The day that began with a debutant making his mark on the big stage ended with a 139-Test-old virtuoso batsman twisting the script of the game to his will.
If Akash Deep’s verve and maturity enthralled the motley spectators in the first session, Joe Root’s exhibition of classical Test match batting engrossed them in the next two sessions. When the day ended, crisp sunshine making way for somber skies, the match was shivering on a knife’s edge.
The visitors will, probably, be the happier side. From 112/5, the tally of 302/7 would have seemed an impossible ascent. Until Root, ridiculed and rebuked for his intemperance this series, seized control of the day, the match seemed another lost cause for England.
But greatness has a knack of emerging from nothingness. The Root on Friday was not the Root of Rajkot, Visakhapatnam or Hyderabad. This was the world-conquering batsman that has marveled you. This was the Root that India had known all too well — no batsman ever has scored as many hundreds as Rootagainst India—and wished would never resurface. But this was not to be.
This was quintessential Root, breathing serenity, exhaling belief, a man in absolute control of the situation and conditions, and fully aware of the path forward. He shed the Bazball pretenses and embraced the good old grind. The single that brought in his half-century was off the 108th ball he had faced. It’s the number of balls his colleagues usually rattle hundreds off.
The cover-driven four that ushered in his 31st hundred — and one of his finest — was just his ninth of the day and off his 219th ball. In a way he was battling against himself — the old and new versions, the steady and spectacular iterations. In the end, he beat himself.