ED. in Arcadia Ego. One of the most striking parts of the game, outside of endless tribal angst, is the obsessive commercialization of the game, the alienation of basic human experience, where people are now “eyeballs” (why not referred to as “dead souls”? Or borrow straight from a commercial bank where customers are referred to as “shitheads”) or indeed every Also… wait. where was i
Yes. One of the best parts of the game is the ability to create clean, crisp, unique beauty islands. The game still offers that quiet space. Here lies the surprise, clarity on its own terms. It is also the case that nothing has done this as well as Test cricket.
With that in mind, if you have the time and the means, you might be tempted to miss out on the extraordinary events of the first Test between Pakistan and England. Particularly mind-blowing was the 454-run partnership between Joe Root and Harry Brook, bounced around the world from Multan in the beautiful bleached-out satellite sunshine, and a truly startling sporting achievement.
It's still hard to get your head around what Root and Brook achieved in 86.3 energy-sapping overs in the toughest and toughest of games, a kind of artistry beyond sheer technique. There was a beautiful sense of balance when looking at these two contrasting versions of the upright, crisply washed right hand. Even the geometry was relaxed, a standard Pakistani attack added with left-arm, right-arm, two types of spin and, of course, bowling all over the place.
Faced with this, Root spends his days studying the physics of the bat face and ball trajectory. It's a gentle intensity, between point and third man that slowly kills you. Brooke is technically the same outline, 6 feet tall, slim, high backlift. But he opens his body, rolls his wrists gently with the ball, plays more in front of the square and creates that remarkably easy power, a millimeter difference at contact, but a completely different energy.
And Brooke is a beautiful player to watch now, lighter and more willowy in his movements with echoes of right-hander David Gower. When he eased his 10th ball through wide mid-on with a delicious low-arc bat, it was clear on those simple lines that something was about to happen in old fashioned Multan. Sometimes, batters are like this, so these formal movements become completely their own, the patterns of batting become so natural and grooved that they begin to express character, emotion, intent.
So it was a decent, proper, champion. I recorded it, the whole thing en route to England's 823 for seven, the fourth-highest team total in Tests. If you love red-ball cricket, it will be tempting to watch it again and again, a game that has always been poetically extinct but is now literally dying.
Why not lose yourself in that sweet, sweet timeless offside mastery? Because something so extreme in its numbers makes us wonder what it means now.
Great partnerships always come and go. In retrospect, they often suggest a simple story. Dravid-Laxman at Eden Gardens in 2001 felt like a shared national power-play as it progressed. Cowdrey-May at Edgbaston in 1957 was part of the feverish pitch era, but now seems an act of bloody-minded defensive nihilism (the invention of bat-defense? Oh yes please, Dad) and why the game was forever doomed by its unruliness.
These events can often take one form. But what about this? This is very serious. Surely it must mean something.
The highlight was of course Root's all-time England run mark. A comically easy on-drive put him past Alastair Cook. He is a truly great athlete. His life was happy. We think of the rhythm in his batting, that pure pleasure when he drives cover, a cool clear square light.
Rudd's popularity is so great that this understated example of craftsmanship and hard work is greeted with genuine love by the crowd, and a thrill of excitement as well. People like controlled, hard things, heat and noise. Root's batting is a popular high art.
So maybe this is what that partnership means. The root is goat. Criticism has already piled up. This number is staggering and certainly unmatched in the last five years. All this is true. But is that really all that's going on here?
Because when you really start to pick this up, to ask why Joe Root is still operating at this level, it can start to feel like something else. Step outside the pleasure of the scene and Root-Brook 454 is a kind of memorial mori, also a sign of the end days for this thing.
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Let's not forget how bad Pakistan is as a Test team. The bowlers rarely played. This is Naseem Shah's second Test match in 15 months, during which he has played eight different white-ball games. It is basically impossible for him to develop into an A-list Test player like this.
Every element is alternately bent towards franchise cricket as it is now a monetizable commodity. Process is everywhere. Talent, heat, time, planning and marketing all pull in this direction.
And Test cricket, let's face it, is pretty terrible right now. Every team outside of the well-funded Big Three is constantly undercooked, depleted, and run down. The bowling attacks are poor. Test-class spin is disappearing. South Africa's elite bowling attack doesn't do it anymore.
It's as simple as that. Market forces, people consuming and profiting from sports, have decided it. But this kind of climate change makes extreme test cases more common.
England can sometimes seem to favor playing amateurs, and their best players are among the only people who still get paid big money to do it. Jimmy Anderson's late career is a testament to this. Incredibly skilful, but basically straight bowling and enough movement to destroy part-time defences.
Is there enough here to make Joe Root the goat for dominating this diminished world (and dominating only marginally: there's Australia, where they play right too)? Probably not, just for lack of evidence.
It feels like an act of theft, undermining the craft, the work, the ingenuity. Pakistan, for example, had three all-time greats in their squad, and there is no doubt that Root would have excelled at a much better time.
But that's a hint of loss, another element of death in the midst of life in this game. So why not just draw the curtains, rewind to the second wicket and crack open a bottle from the ever-weary box. It's a real modern masterclass, but maybe just another guide along the way.
