There may have been a degree of self-effacement about Joe Root’s remarks, the great England cricket batter never one to trumpet his own world-leading qualities, yet his rhapsodic reference of Harry Brook was said with conviction. “Brooky is by far and away the best player in the world at the minute,” Root effused of his fellow Yorkshireman. “He can absorb pressure; he can apply it. He can whack you over your head for six. He can scoop you over his head for six. He can smack spin. He can smack seam.”
The declarations of close colleagues are often best taken with a healthy dollop of salt but the statistical case for Brook’s supremacy is growing ever stronger. The 25-year-old has supplanted his senior middle order partner for county and country at the top of the Test batting rankings – strong Yorkshire, strong England, as the old adage goes.
The 91-ball ton in Wellington that hauled the tourists’ first innings from the furnace was Brook’s eighth in Test cricket and seventh away from home, as many as AB de Villiers achieved across 14 years in South African whites. With his next century, Brook will draw level with the tallies of Robin Smith, Ted Dexter and Jonathan Trott; barely two years into a still nascent international career, he is already in illustrious company.
And all this at a time when Test batting has rarely been harder. Sterner examinations are to come for Brook, of course. His record is bolstered by his absence from the torturous tour of India for personal reasons, with his overseas exploits coming entirely in Pakistan and New Zealand – nations whose natural topography is not necessarily reflected in their cricket surfaces. His propensity for chasing wide of off stump and desire to take on the short ball will come under scrutiny in Australia, who have both the thoroughbreds and firm going to prove troublesome.
But there is a soundness of technique and temperament that suggests that Brook may just lead the next generation of great Test batters, who are emerging at just the right time. It was a decade ago that the late Martin Crowe dubbed Root, India’s Virat Kohli, Australia’s Steve Smith and New Zealand’s Kane Williamson as the “Fab Four”, which proved a prescient prediction.
While each has ridden fluctuations of form and fluency, they have defined an era of Test cricket, rising together to take the captaincy of their countries and now ebbing towards the inevitable end. While a crepuscular Root is sparkling in the twilight like a firefly, Kohli and Smith have shown only fleeting glimpses recently of past glory, while the inexorable creep of age and ailments are increasingly afflicting Williamson.
As one begins to look to life beyond them, it becomes clear that the fields of batting brilliance have laid fallow for a period. Using a qualifier of 20 innings, only one player has averaged north of 50 having debuted in the period between Root’s first outing in 2012 and Brook’s bow in the summer of 2022: and Adam Voges’s brief, belated and beguiling Test career is something of a statistical oddity.
But, as every farmer knows, fallow years often prove fruitful in the long run. In fertile turf, a fresh crop is germinating. One cannot help but be enchanted by the princely talents of India opener Yashasvi Jaiswal, who marries a relatively simple technique with the pomp and pageantry one might expect of a graduate of the Indian Premier League (IPL) finishing school.
A lean Test against the pink ball in Adelaide has dropped Jaiswal’s average down to 54.89, but his ton to set up first Test victory in Perth showed that the left-hander has the game to thrive in all conditions. While the natural variance that comes with facing the new ball may cap the top-end potential of Jaiswal’s average– the middle order is a safer place to swell the mark – the 22-year-old has the voracity of a run-glutton and the confidence, bordering at times on arrogance, that Brook also possesses.
And then there is Kamindu Mendis, who surpassed 50 in each of his first eight Tests. The Sri Lankan left-hander is still three innings away from meeting the established qualifying threshold but his average sits in the mid-70s, even after enduring a tricky time in South Africa. Mendis’s unflustered innings in England last summer showed, though, that he is a man for all conditions. By comparison, the sturdy Saud Shakeel of Pakistan has enjoyed a statistically excellent 24 months but averages 15 outside of Asia.
Sage judges in South Africa have earkmarked Dewald Brevis as a special talent; Alick Athanaze of the West Indies topped the run charts at the U19 World Cup at which Brook also starred. Yet out of a desire for natural succession, it is to New Zealand and Australia that many will look to anoint a pair to join Jaiswal and Brook in the next generation. Hopes are high for the Blackcaps’ Rachin Ravindra, so outstanding in his debut World Cup campaign last winter and already with a Test match double-century in his pocket, while Canterbury opener Rhys Mariu has scores of 240, 185, 87 and 70 in the domestic Plunket Shield competition in the last month.
Top prospects across the Tasman are not quite so clear, with Cameron Green’s injury woes and bowling workload threatening to inhibit his development. Recent debutant Nathan McSweeney is virtually the same age as Brook and, while clearly a batter of steel and substance, may lack the sizzle and stardust to reach the top stratum. 19-year-old New South Wales opener Sam Konstas looks a player of real potential and may soon join or supplant McSweeney in the Test top order but some analysts have already suggested a weakness against the nip-backer and inswing, a potential frailty that will be magnified when a step-up is made.
Another “fab four” will clearly not be so neatly forged. The shared similarities between Root, Smith, Kohli and Williamson were striking; two years and two months apart in age, the four right-handers came to captaincy and linchpin status at similar times. Just as remarkable as Crowe’s prescience is that the quartet all excelled – the ceaseless debate over which individual is the greatest of the group can only be had because each became the best version of themselves. Even as a new generation emerges, they are a special cohort worth savouring.
