Cricket
Darren Gough on Joe Root: “An Unbelievable Player and the Heartbeat of England Cricket”
Former England fast bowler Darren Gough hails Joe Root as an unbelievable player and the heartbeat of England cricket, praising his skill, dedication, and influence on the team.
Image Credit: Gareth Copley/Getty Images
Former England and Yorkshire fast bowler Gough describes Root as an unbelievable player and great human being.
Joe Root is a work of art. He barely put a wrong foot forward in his career. The legendary England batter broke records during the 2-1 Test series win against Sri Lanka at home.
He registered his 34th Test hundred and surpassed compatriot Alastair Cook (33) alongside Fab Four colleagues Kane Williamson (32) and Steve Smith (32).
Root has been England's brightest spot in the otherwise topsy-turvy ride in the World Test Championship Cycle 2023-25. He scored five centuries and six fifties at an average of 53.76. The right-hander scored centuries against Australia, India, West Indies and Sri Lanka.
The Yorkshire Charm
Former England speedster Darren Gough, who appeared in 58 Tests and 192 ODIs, believes Root has to score for the nation to keep winning. "Joe Root, by far, is an unbelievable player and great human being. He wants to score runs after runs. He is always looking to improve," he told SportsBoom.com.
Gough and Root come from Yorkshire. The County is known for producing champion players from Geoff Boycott to Michael Vaughan. Root's positive attitude and warmth come from his background.
He is a Yorkshire man, mate. Yorkshire men are like that. He plays with a smile, lives the game, and comes from a cricketing family. His dad played, his brother plays, Joe plays, and cricket is his life. To beat any team, you need him to score runs. He is the heartbeat of England. He is quality.
Darren Gough
The Master of All Shots
“He has all the shots in the book.”
Root kept experimenting throughout his career. He mastered the art of sweeping and reverse-sweeping against spinners, which helped him score in the subcontinent.
His dip in form in the series against India led to murmurs that Root is perhaps a victim of the aggressive Bazball approach. The seasoned batter was quick to turn things around.
"In the last two years, he has tried to change his game by playing different shots. He went a bit too far, but he is learning all the time. Now he has gone back to his style of building an innings and then expanding on his shots.”
"He has all the shots in the book," analysed Gough, adding that young players keep the pressure off Root. "We see the best of him at the moment as we also have exuberant youngsters playing shots. This is the way this England team plays. It had reasonable success in Pakistan although we lost against Australia and India."
Mentoring the Next Generation
Gough highlighted how Root has been silently teaching the tricks of the trade to fellow Yorkshire junior, Harry Brook, by batting together.
"There are people like Brook who are learning all the time. He is a fantastic player and another one who lives cricket. He is learning from Joe all the time. It is good for him to bat with him in periods," said Gough, who retired from Test cricket in 2003 with 229 wickets.
England's next red-ball assignment is a tour of Pakistan in October that involves three Tests in Multan, Karachi and Rawalpindi.
Wriddhaayan Bhattacharyya is a cricket journalist based in India who takes a keen interest in stories that unfold on and off the field. His expertise lies in news writing, features and profiles, interviews, stats, and numbers-driven stories. He has also worked as a podcaster and talk show host on cricket-related shows on YouTube and Spotify.