There is a final day still to be negotiated in this Test match, one that is positively pregnant with possibilities, but it is safe to say that Joe Root the batsman will be glad to see the back of Lord’s for another year.
During the World Cup there was little comfort to be found at the Home of Cricket. Against Australia in the group stage he was trapped lbw for eight by a beautiful in-swinger from Mitchell Starc. The final with New Zealand then witnessed what Root has since described as one of the worst innings of his life: ignominiously caught behind off Colin de Grandhomme’s dibbly-dobblers for a 30-ball seven as the pressure told.
In the one-off Test match against Ireland it was Mark Adair who triggered the lbw glitch for eight in the first innings, while in the second Root caught behind off the same man. He had frantically charged down the pitch on 31, trying to force the issue on a surface that he would later grouse about.
Fast forward to this second Ashes Test and the results read no better. Having once again been trapped in front on day two for 14 – Josh Hazlewood exposed the long-standing issue with a perfect set-up – Root found himself walking out to the middle in the fifth over of England’s second innings.
But any thoughts that he might soothe a day that had caught fire in the afternoon through Jofra Archer’s alarming spell to Steve Smith soon evaporated; the England captain was out for the first golden duck of his career.
As Pat Cummins wheeled away in celebration, delighted to have found the edge of a hard-handed push, Root looked down at the surface once more. Batsmen seek comfort in such moments but the true culprit was the man whose fast, accurate delivery in the fourth stump channel had found the edge.
Before the series began, an eye-catching fact emerged from the analysts at CricViz that challenges perceptions about the keys to success: since returning to Test cricket in 2017 after a near six-year injury lay-off, no bowler has found less lateral movement than Cummins. His average swing is down as the lowest during this time, while only a handful of rivals extract less off the seam. Despite all this, Cummins has still risen to become the world’s No 1 Test bowler and, given the yawning gap down to South Africa’s Kagiso Rabada in second place, few could dispute his claim at present.
In England for the first time since carrying drinks on the 2013 tour, Cummins has a bit more to play with, too. Instead of the Kookaburra ball, he has the Duke at his disposal and while the latest edition may be yet to produce any sustained spells of swing, the hand-stitched seam is high.
This is nectar from the gods for a bowler like Cummins. Once afflicted by back injuries that threatened to derail his career before it had truly begun, the 26-year-old is now a robust tank of a seam bowler who pounds away on off stump. With speeds consistently in the high 80s, he needs but a smidgeon of sideways to become a menace.
Cummins is clearly more than a just a muscular workhorse. In much the same way he closed out the Edgbaston Test, there was the delivery that brought Root to the crease in the first place. Jason Roy’s suitability as an opener remains a source of much debate but the rising brute that pinged his leading edge and gave Cummins a simple return catch would have accounted for a good few others.
Cummins would have taken the new ball feeling pretty good about life, too, with his latest display of tail-end resistance in Australia’s first-innings – 20 from 80 balls – vital to the mere eight-run deficit that came to pass.
England have been here before with Cummins, whose solid technique, honed during those years when bowling was not possible, proved a source of much frustration during the 2017-18 series.
Here he repelled some of Archer’s most venomous work and ploughed on, unperturbed, after Smith was felled. England’s shiny new weapon may be drawing much of the attention but the best around is playing for the opposition.
