BRISBANE — Matthew Hayden will be relieved, as will most of the population of Sydney no doubt, after Joe Root rammed the jibes of all his Antipodean critics back down their throats with a first Ashes century in Australia.
Coming to the crease in the third over of this day-night Test with his team five for two after Ben Duckett and Ollie Pope both departed for ducks, Root banished the one anomaly of his career when he stroked Scott Boland for four down the legside to seal his 40th Test century, just one behind Australian great Ricky Ponting.
The celebration? A simple shrug. What was all the fuss about, eh?
By this stage, England were 256 for seven, having thrown away the promising platform they’d built after the dismissals of captain Ben Stokes, Jamie Smith and Will Jacks during the final session under the Gabba floodlights.
This is a match the Bazballers simply have to win to keep their Ashes hopes alive following their two-day defeat in the series opener in Perth.
So Root, whose class has kept his team in this contest, will take great satisfaction from removing the one stick Australians could beat him with – and one that has been incessantly repeated ever since he landed in the country.
Former Australia coach Darren Lehmann started the ball rolling more than a year ago when he said Root would always be a “rung below” the all-time greats until he scored a century Down Under.
Others have followed, including The West Australian newspaper at the start of the tour, who under the front-page headline “Average Joe” branded the Yorkshireman a “dud Root” when he landed in Perth last month. Root has a sexual connotation in Australia.
Hayden, the former Australia opener, was one of Root’s biggest defenders before the tour began, bravely stating he’d walk naked round the Sydney Cricket Ground at the end of the series if the Englishman didn’t score a century.
Now that prospect, and the ridiculous Aussie baiting of England’s greatest batter, is over.
Questioning Root’s place among the greats was always a fool’s errand given he moved above Ponting to No2 in the all-time list of Test runscorers last summer on his way to three centuries in the series against India.
Only India great Sachin Tendulkar remains ahead of him in that particular list and at the age of 34 and just over 2,000 runs behind the Little Master, there’s the tantalising prospect of Root potentially going past the Indian during the next home Ashes series in the summer of 2027.
He had already gone past Sir Alastair Cook’s England record of 12,472 Test runs during last winter’s tour of Pakistan.
Now with three Tests remaining in this series and six against New Zealand and Pakistan at home next summer, there’s a chance for Root to make a decent dent into that target.
Having made his Test debut against India in Nagpur in December 2012, Root has now scored centuries in every Test nation excluding Bangladesh, where he’s played just two matches, and Zimbabwe, where he’s never played.
His three centuries in India, and the fact that 15 of his 39 centuries before this were away from home, was surely enough to prove his greatness.
Now it cannot be argued, even by the most one-eyed Australian.
There will be relief that on this Ashes tour, his fourth in total, Root has got the monkey off his back, especially as he started this series with a duck in Perth.
Indeed, including all formats and levels of cricket, including a stint in grade cricket in Adelaide in the winter of 2010-11, this was Root’s first hundred in the country in 58 matches and 71 innings.
Why it’s taken so long really was a mystery. But in the biggest Test match of the Bazball era, it should be no surprise that Root, whose timing is always impeccable, chose this moment to break his duck.
There was an early chance for Australia to remove him cheaply, Root edging through the slip cordon on two.
The hosts, who dropped spinner Nathan Lyon for the first time in 71 home Tests, also lost two of their three reviews – both hopeful lbw shouts from Boland – trying to prise Root out.
Nothing, though, was going to deny England’s grand master from erasing this particular stain from his glittering record.
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