Why Joe Root’s troubles against Jasprit Bumrah and Pat Cummins show he can’t be considered a ‘great’ batsman | Cricket News

Against two of the best fast bowlers of his era, Jasprit Bumrah and Pat Cummins, Joe Root has been poor. Cummins has seen him off 11 times for an average of 26, Bumrah 9 times for 28.2, and it raises the question — can Root be considered a great in the true sense of the word? One of the best among his contemporaries, certainly, but greatness requires something more than that. This isn’t just about his dismissals in the Vizag chase and in Rajkot but over and beyond that. He did throw his wicket on the third morning, opening the door for Ashwin-less India reverse lapping Bumrah to second slip where Yashasvi Jaiswal hung on to a sharp chance. For a batsman and former captain with game awareness, it wasn’t ideal. In the chase at Vizag, he had turned almost manic, scything and swishing and fell to a slog off Ashwin. That turned the game, along with Ben Stokes’s brain fade of a run out. Now potentially, this dismissal can do the same in Rajkot. And Kuldeep Yadav gatecrashed in to take out Jonny Bairstow with a ripper to trap him lbw and England were on the wobble.
Root had once spoken about how there is an inner battle inside him between the dogged Yorkshireman and the captain’s voice in his ears to ‘go be a superstar’. He has been going over the boil here trying to be that superstar. The course-correction is perhaps not so difficult to do, but greater questions pers over his entry into the all-time-great club.
It’s not these two dismissals in the series that has encouraged the fastidious bouncers of that greatness club to stop him at the gate, but his struggles against Cummins and Bumrah.
Cummins has repeatedly targeted him around the off stump, and harassed him getting the ball to straighten to take out the off stump & the outside edge or cut in to trap him lbw. Couple of times, he has surprised him with bouncers that have been jabbed to the slip or pulled weakly to square-leg.

One can suss out that Cummins makes Root, the batsman who uses the crease generally really well, feel claustrophobic at the crease. It’s as if one one all escape routes are shut. And he is cornered into a small tight space. Stuck inside the crease, the feet going nowhere, it all gets a bit much.
He has had the problem of head falling over and Cummins exploited it with the nip-backers. When Root began to move closer to the off-stump guard to try bat straighter and be stiller with the head, Cummins began to harass him with straighteners and away-shapers in combination with the nip-backers. It would appear with that stance there is no real gap for the ball to ping the off stump but Cummins has repeatedly done it. Most memorably, in the pink ball in Adelaide, when he curved the ball away past the prod to knock out the off stump.

But the space he gets into against Cummins is noteworthy: cramped, retreating inside, nowhere to go, living on a prayer. Not the walking-down Root, not the stretching-forward Root, not the press-back to punch Root. Cummins has had that effect.
It’s what Bumrah has also done. With that combo of nip-backer and away-shapers. Bumrah’s natural extended-arm release and the inherent illusion it creates as if the ball is tailing in has proven a fatal attraction for Root. His arms betray him and then he jabs and stabs.
In the second innings of the first Test, Bumrah did the early Cummins trick of the nipbacker and Root stumbled across a touch as he tried to work it to the on side and missed. Trapped lbw. In the first innings of the second Test, Bumrah worked him over the on off stump line, making him worry about the nipbacker, and getting him with a straightener outside off.

Watching it unfold was former England captain Alastair Cook. ”At Hyderabad, he was playing across the line and got LBW. Early on he saw an in-swinger and played a beautiful straight bat, so he’s trying to do it. But what he does do, you’re looking to play the ball all the time,” he told TNT Sports.
“Bumrah has realised that and dragged him wider. So you’re trying to cover that but it brings another dismissal into play, so he’s got him out both ways now. Now Root’s in that horrible position that the bowler has got the wood over you, so how are you going to counter it?”

Lightning reflexes from Jaiswal! ⚡️👏
A bright start for Bumrah & #TeamIndia 😍💪 on Day 3! 🔥#INDvENG #JioCinemaSports #BazBowled #IDFCFirstBankTestSeries pic.twitter.com/y4FwWbIX5K
— JioCinema (@JioCinema) February 17, 2024
He has seemingly tried to counter it pulling out the reverse lap and has succumbed.
But it’s not this shot that would stop him at the gates of greatness, but all those previous dismissals against Bumrah and Cummins. This lap-shot dismissal though has opened up the third Test and put England on the backfoot.
Virat Kohli has had troubles against James Anderson but he recovered from the depths of the 2014 series. Kane Williamson too has been taken out Anderson 9 times. But Root’s troubles against two best bowlers of his time has been a continuing affair and especially the mode of dismissals where he begins to look like an imposter is at another level. And worrying. The gates of the greatness club are closing shut as of now.
Root vs Bumrah
506 balls, 254 runs, 9 dismissals, 28.2 average
Root vs Cummins
536 balls., 286 runs, 11 dismissals, 26.0 average