![]() ![]() “I don’t feel like Superman, I’m absolutely bricking it when he’s running in to bowl most of the time,” Root said of playing the stroke in the Ashes. Technically, this is a difficult stroke to master, and requires bravery, too getting into position early, and risking taking a ball in the grille. After Boland was attacked with the wicketkeeper up to the stumps on Monday, Cameron Green was banished from gully to third man. Root uses the shot to score runs, but also to force a captain’s hand if they need to protect the third-man boundary, a fielder has to be sacrificed. Root has explained before that he sees the shot as a good option when there is no third man in place, and not many men in the cordon to catch a miscue - as happened once, in New Zealand in February. That was exactly what Root was looking to do, at an extremely delicate moment in the game. Even though he missed it, it set the tone for the day.” “No one’s tried to reverse ramp Pat Cummins first ball of the day. “That’s never been done before,” Pope said. The shot, and the match, showed a batsman at the peak of his powers. Although he would undoubtedly have traded it all to be part of a winning team (he admitted that defeat “stung”), Root’s contribution was enough to move him back atop the International Cricket Council’s Test batting rankings. Root had reverse-ramped both Boland and Cummins in his first-innings century, but could manage just a sparkling cameo in the second. He missed, smiled, then got down the other end and played it again to Scott Boland, for six, then four. On Monday morning, with the first Test finely poised, Joe Root fidgeted in the Edgbaston changing room before asking Ollie Pope, England’s other not-out batsman overnight, “Shall I do it, first ball of the day?”.Ī few minutes later, despite the Australian field not being quite right for it and the bowler, Pat Cummins, being perhaps the very best paceman of his generation, Root did “it”: he tried his reverse ramp. ![]()
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