Et in Arcadia ego. One of the most striking parts of sport, outside the endless tribal rage, the venal commercialising of play, the alienation of the basic human experience to the extent people are now literately referred to as “eyeballs” (why not “dead souls”? Or just borrow straight from the bit of merchant banking where customers are referred to as “shitheads”) or indeed the way every single … Hang on. Where was I?
Yes. One of the best parts of sport is its ability to create clean, crisp, distinct islands of beauty. Sport still offers that quiet space. There is wonder here, and clarity on its own terms. It is also still the case that nothing does this quite like Test cricket.
With this in mind, it was tempting to lose yourself, if you had the time and means, in the extraordinary events of the first Test between Pakistan and England. Specifically in the mind-bending 454-run partnership between Joe Root and Harry Brook, bounced around the world from Multan in lovely bleached-out satellite sunlight, and a genuinely startling sporting feat.
It is still hard to get your head around what Root and Brook achieved across a staggering 86.3 energy-sapping overs in the most draining and difficult of sports, a partnership that went beyond extreme technique into a kind of formal artistry. There was such a lovely sense of balance watching these two differing versions of upright, crisply laundered right-handedness. Even the geometry was soothing, a quality Pakistan’s attack added to with left-arm, right-arm, two types of spin and also, of course, bowling all over the place.
Faced with this, Root will spend his day exploring the physics of bat face and ball trajectory. It is a gentle severity, killing you softly between point and third man. Brook is technically the same outline, 6ft tall, slim, high backlift. But he opens his body, wrists cocked rather then rolling with the ball, playing more in front of square, generating that remarkably easy power, a difference of millimetres at the point of contact, but an entirely different kind of energy.
Plus Brook is just a lovely player to watch now, lighter and more willowy in his movements, with echoes of a right-handed David Gower. It seemed clear something was about to happen in Multan when he eased his 10th ball through wide mid-on with a delicious low arc of the bat, oddly old-fashioned in those simple lines. Sometimes, batters look like this, so at ease that these formal movements become entirely their own, the shapes of batting so natural and grooved they begin to express character, emotions, intent.
So yeah it was decent, proper, champion. I’ve got it recorded, the whole thing en route to England’s 823 for seven, the fourth highest team total in Tests. It will be tempting if you love red-ball cricket, a sport that has always seemed to be dying poetically but which is now also actually dying, to watch it again and often.
Why not drown in honey, losing yourself in that sweet, sweet timeless offside mastery? Because it is also tempting to wonder what something so extreme in its numbers is supposed to mean right now.
Great partnerships have always come and gone. In hindsight they often suggest a simple narrative. Dravid-Laxman at Eden Gardens in 2001 felt like a shared national power-play as it progressed. Cowdrey-May at Edgbaston in 1957 was part of a fever-pitch age, but also looks now like an act of bloody-minded defensive nihilism (the invention of pad-defence? Oh yes please daddy) that kind of signals why this sport of attrition was always doomed by its unwieldiness.
These events can often take on a shape. But what about this one? It’s just so extreme. Surely it has to mean something.
The key note was of course Root reaching the all-time England run mark. A ludicrously easy on-drive took him past Alastair Cook. He is just a genuinely great sportsperson. His career has been a joy. We think of the rhythm in his batting, that sense of pure pleasure when he times a cover drive, a cool clear square of light.
Root’s popularity is also great, the way this essentially understated, upright, quietly insistent example of craft and hard work is greeted with real affection by crowds, and also a thrill of excitement. People like restrained, difficult things, as well as heat and noise. Root’s batting is popular high art.
So probably this is what that partnership means. Root is the Goat. The reviews have already gushed. The numbers are staggering, and certainly unmatched in the last five years. This is all true. But is it really all that is happening here?
Because when you really start to pick at this, to ask why Joe Root is still operating at this level, it can start to feel like something else. Step outside the pleasure of the spectacle and Root-Brook 454 is also a kind of memento mori, a slice of life that is also a sign of end days for this thing.
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Let us not forget how absolutely abysmal Pakistan are as a Test team, and for sound structural reasons. The bowlers have barely played. This was Naseem Shah’s second Test match in 15 months, during which he has played white-ball games in eight different competitions. It is basically impossible for him to develop as an A-list Test player like this.
Every element is bent the other way, towards the churn of interchangeable franchise cricket, because this is a commodity that can be monetised now. The process is everywhere. All the talent, heat, timing, planning and marketing is pulled in this direction.
And Test cricket is, let’s face it, pretty dreadful right now. Every team outside the well-funded Big Three are constantly undercooked, depleted and run down. Bowling attacks are poor. Test-class spin is disappearing. South Africa’s elite bowling attack basically just doesn’t do this any more.
This is simply the way it is. Market forces, the way people consume and profit from sport, has decided it. But this type of climate change also makes extreme Test events more common.
England can at times seem like pros playing amateurs, their best players among the only people who are still paid large amounts to do this. Jimmy Anderson’s late career is testimony to this. Unbelievably skilful, but basically bowling straight and with enough movement to destroy part-time defences.
Is there enough here to make Joe Root the Goat for dominating this diminished world (and only partly dominating: Australia remains, where they also play properly)? Probably not, if only for lack of evidence.
This in itself feels like an act of theft, an undermining of all that craft, work, brilliance. No doubt Root would also have done exceptionally well in a more specialist time, when Pakistan, for example, had three all-time greats in their team.
But it is a note of loss, another element of death in the middle of this sporting life. So why not just draw the curtains, rewind to second wicket down and open a bottle from that ever depleting crate. This was a true modern masterclass, but also perhaps another signpost along the way.
