Joe Root has spent the summer walking off with that familiar shake of the head, pads thudded by the ball, finger raised again. Nine times in his past seven Tests he has gone lbw, seven of those this summer alone. The numbers look stark. Root, as ever, looks unmoved.
“I’ve played this game a long time and I’ve always found ways of solving those problems and working it through,” England’s all-time leading Test run-scorer told BBC’s Today at the Test. “I don’t see this as being any different.
“There’s a reason why I’ve got 14,000 runs and a reason why I’ve played the best part of 15 years at this level.”
The statistics suggest a dip. Root has passed fifty only twice this summer, his average of 29.44 his second-lowest in a home season across a 14-year international career. For most players, that would be a decent return. For a man with 14,208 Test runs – a figure bettered only by Sachin Tendulkar – it jars.
The manner of dismissal has sharpened the focus. Root keeps finding his front pad in the firing line.
A trend that won’t go away
The lbw pattern has become too frequent to ignore. Root’s recent run began at the Boxing Day Test in Melbourne when Jhye Richardson trapped him in the second innings. Since that moment, the Yorkshireman has been out lbw nine times in 12 Test innings, every single one of them to pace bowlers.
It is not express pace doing the damage. None of those dismissals has come against genuine quicks; they have all been against right-arm seamers operating at around 84mph, pitching the ball outside off stump and jagging it back in. The classic English seamer’s dismissal, but now repeatedly claiming England’s most prolific Test batter.
Root is not blind to the pattern, nor is he rushing to panic. He points instead to the conditions that have confronted every batter in the UK this summer.
“There are probably four umpires’ calls within that, which could have gone the other way, and the ball is probably deviating more than it ever has,” he said. “You try and be realistic and understand where everything’s at, but also be aware of what you need to do to keep improving and keep getting better.
“I’m pretty sure I’ll get through the other side. I’m not too concerned about that.”
Warner’s jibe and a shifting narrative
The scrutiny around Root’s front pad is not new, but the evidence has changed. Last summer, David Warner couldn’t resist a dig, saying Root would “have to take the surfboard off his front leg” if he wanted success in the Ashes that followed.
At the time, the numbers didn’t back the Australian opener up. Between August 2022 and the fourth Ashes Test in Melbourne that December, Root was dismissed lbw by seamers only three times in Test cricket. Hardly a glaring technical flaw.
Since Richardson pinned him in that Boxing Day innings, though, the story has been different. The dismissals have piled up, the angle from right-arm seam, the ball starting wide and bending back in, has become a clear and present threat. What was once a throwaway jibe has turned into a talking point on every commentary box graphic.
Root, though, has built a career on answering questions like this.
“You’re never given anything in this game,” he said. “You have to work for everything. You have to keep working hard and I’ll certainly keep doing that.
“You’re constantly going to get challenged and you’re constantly going to have to look to evolve and learn, but that’s never been something I’ve shied away from and I certainly won’t be doing moving forward.”
Faith in a proven problem-solver
When a player with Root’s record hits a technical snag, the debate is always framed in bigger terms: is this the start of a decline, or just another problem to be solved?
Former England captain Michael Vaughan has no doubt which side he is on.
“He’s always overcome problems and I’m pretty sure he’ll overcome this one,” Vaughan said. “It is an issue because it’s happening on a regular basis, but he’s had issues in the past that he’s managed to come back from. There’s no question he’ll be fine in time.”
The pressure on Root is different to most. Every lean patch is measured against greatness, not adequacy. Every flaw is magnified because there have been so few for so long.
Yet his response remains the same as it was when he first walked into the England dressing room: accept the challenge, do the work, trust the method that took him to the top.
For now, the lbws keep coming. The ball keeps bending back in. The question is simple and brutal: can the man with 14,208 Test runs rewrite the script again, or will this summer’s trend harden into something more permanent as his remarkable career moves into its final chapters?
