Joe Root paints latest Lord's masterpiece to give old-school England edge against India

Independent

10-07-2025

Perhaps the first sign of the classical day of Test cricket that lay ahead was the sight of Sachin Tendulkar, immaculately wrapped in a double-breasted jacket, ringing the five-minute bell before play. This was an old-school day that the Little Master would surely have luxuriated in during his playing days, a good – if slightly slow – surface providing enough to encourage batter and bowler and England eschewing some of their extravagant electronica to harmonise with India on a gentler, more melodic tune.
To what extent was England's abandonment of their ultra-attacking dogma a reaction to their defeat at Edgbaston? It is a tricky question to answer given how well India's attack operated and far from benign conditions, seam and spin on offer to quench the bowlers' thirst at last in a series in which batters had thus far guzzled.
Still supping his favourite libation, though, is Joe Root, who ended the day 99 not out to underpin England's total of 251 for 4. It was an innings that Tendulkar surely would have enjoyed even as it edged his potential conqueror closer to the throne he currently occupies; Root beginning the day 2806 runs behind Test cricket's leading scorer and ending it slightly closer. In doing so, England's No 4 closed in on a couple more modern masters – Rahul Dravid, Jacques Kallis and third place on the all-time list are well within reach tomorrow once a 37th Test ton has been completed.
If Tendulkar's tally once seemed out of reach, Root's insatiable appetite for runs was evidenced again. The last few months have seen the so-called Fab Four begin to curl at the corners: Virat Kohli has bowed out of Test cricket, while Kane Williamson is picking and choosing his trips as he enters his international dotage. Even Steve Smith seems to spend as much time in New York as the nets, though a second-innings 71 in Grenada last week for Australia was perhaps worth double.
Root, though, remains right at the peak of his powers, and England needed him to be here on an day plucked from their past, starts squandered around their middle order linchpin. A portrait of Tendulkar had been hung in the pavilion gallery on Thursday morning and Root's image will surely join him, the Yorkshireman having painted many a masterpiece on this patch of north London pasture himself.
The old adage at Lord's is to look up not down and the steepling sunshine of high summer overhead perhaps made Ben Stokes 's call to bat straightforward. So established, however, is England's chasing modus operandi that the decision to bat drew coos of excitation from the galleries, even the birds in the trees over the road in Regent's Park seeming to warble a tune of pleasant surprise as Jofra Archer 's return to Test action was delayed by a day, at least.
India skipper Shubman Gill, intriguingly, would have bowled. He, and the gathered patrons, might have anticipated the cacophony that usually accompanies England with bat in hand to soon sound but Ben Duckett and Zak Crawley kept the volume low in testing conditions. India poked and probed with the ball doing plenty, a returning Jasprit Bumrah drawing an edge from the left-hander in his opening over, only to find the ball falling short of Rishabh Pant 's gloves.
Crawley was dancing to his own tune, moving around the crease with the skittish energy of a deer at a discotheque, but he and Duckett stuck in there, putting away some of their more daring deeds. Indeed, the tall Crawley's only real misstep before drinks was when he fell flat on his face turning for a second at the striker's end; yet more ammunition, perhaps, for critics of his uncertain footwork.
Surviving the first hour without a wicket did feel like a real achievement, though, but the sense of success was shattered immediately after the break by Nitish Kumar Reddy. India's fourth seamer, a batting all-rounder, would probably not take the new ball for a strong club side yet proved all but unplayable: Duckett was strangled down the legside for 23 before one nipped down the slope into the gloves of Rishabh Pant via the outside edge of Crawley's poking Gray-Nicolls.
With Ollie Pope put down in the gully in between the dismissals, fears of a frenzy grew after a sedate start by England's standards, but affairs were soon steadied again. Root exuded calm from the moment he sashayed down the pavilion steps and he and Pope combined well, the No 3 clearly backing himself against Bumrah as he negotiated 28 balls of a five-over spell after lunch. It was certainly slow going – a 100 brought up in 35.4 overs was England's most pedestrian progress at home since the dawn of this avant-garde new movement – but the roundheads calling for less cavalier cricket from England in the wake of defeat last week had perhaps been heard.
Root pootled to 50 from 102 balls just prior to tea and Pope (44) seemed certain to follow him soon after until Ravindra Jadeja drew a thin edge with the first ball after the interval. A sharp catch was taken by wicketkeeper Dhruv Jurel - deputising for a stricken Pant, whose finger injury is not thought to be serious. A returning Bumrah then burst one through the defences of Harry Brook.
That brought Stokes to the crease, the skipper under scrutiny almost two years after his last Test hundred, made here in a flurry of fury after Jonny Bairstow's stumping by Alex Carey. In the image of his team, his attacking instincts were tempered, though - Stokes surviving cramp, a probing spell from India's tweakers, Jadeja and Washington Sundar, a three-over new-ball burst and – most bizarrely – flying insects to remain with Root to the close.