Go and exploit that back lift, India!

However, Indians were not persistent in their effort and bowled wayward deliveries constantly which gave Root a chance to settle down on the wicket and then found those singles and doubles easy to come by. Had bowlers been disciplined enough to exploit the chink in that high back-lift, India would have been in an even better place at the end of the day. 

The fact that Alastair Cook has an obvious problem in countering Ravichandran Ashwin is no secret so much so that it has been detailed to such an extent that it is not worth repeating here. However, the way the Indian off-spinner set-up the former English skipper would have brought a smile to the face of any purist watching the game. 

To trouble the English opener, Ashwin bowled a slower ball around the off-stump line which drifted away ever so slightly from him. Cook, in the anticipation of defending it, prodded his leg forward and was beaten completely. The second ball was pitched it up and Cook found it easy to drive it to point. However, that was the mistake that Cook made as he expected another full-length arm ball from Ashwin, but the Tamil Nadu boy is too intelligent to live up to batsman’s gut feeling. Ashwin rather bowled a ball straight and it was a slower one when it came out of his hand. 

After Cook’s dismissal, Ashwin ended the day with a figure of 4 for 60 - an apt response to his hoards of critics. This singular performance might seal his spot in the side for the rest of the series. 

So here is a staggering stat for all of you. Joe Root is as a good a batsman as anyone in the world at the moment and the validation comes from the fact that no one has more fifty-plus scores in Tests than him since his Test debut in 2012. With England’s opening slot being a ghastly rendition of musical chairs after Andrew Strauss’ retirement in 2012, Root has rescued his team from tricky situations time and again by being the anchor as well as the enforcer in the time of need. However, one thing that must have given the English skipper a run for his money has been his inability to convert these into big ones.

However, it was not always like that. Until the end of 2015, the same year in which England registered a 3-2 series victory in the home Ashes, Root managed to score eight hundred plus scores from his 21 fifty-plus starts. His conversion rate of 38% ranked was joint-15th among 23 batsmen who had ten or more such innings in the history of the game. However, since the beginning of 2016, Root has been a complete opposite. Although scoring 29 fifty-plus scores in the last three years from 61 innings since then, he has managed to get to three figures only five times with a conversion rate of 17.24%. And if that doesn’t seem bad enough, since 2016, his conversion rate ranks a poor 18th among 19 batsmen in this period - something that has been a worrying trend for the English skipper.