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In the end even the celebration was perfect, out there under that strange deep-blue southern sky, in the frenzy of the game-state – manic Baz energy, England’s lower order scything away death cult-style at the other end, the way even the grass seems lacquered and glazed by the lights.
So yeah. All that stuff. In the middle of this Joe Root guided the ball away through point to complete his first Test hundred in Australia, then marked it with a gentle smile and a wave of the bat, no fist-punching, no monkeys off backs, no angsty and pointed messaging.
But, then if you know, you know. Imagine trying to explain to someone who hasn’t followed the story why this was not just warm, uplifting and cathartic, but quietly epic, a moment caught for ever in its own square of space and light.
A man who already had 39 hundreds in this starchy formal dance of a sport has now scored his 40th. But follow the story, the craft, the jags in the road, the pieces this thing takes out of you along the way. And at the end of it you have one of those great self-contained sporting moments, the sense of emotional connection through all the surrounding hoopla, the way Test cricket in particular can make you feel you know someone intimately just by watching them move and work and fail and come back.
There will, of course, be plenty of banter-war stuff to be resolved on all sides now. Is Joe Root finally great? Is he Australian great? Do we have enough? Numbers. Symmetry. Completion. Men in sheds stroking their beards and sighing. At times cricket really does feel like nothing more than lists, pencil stubs, a fussicky ticking of boxes.
But there is something more about wanting Root to be great in Australia. It’s not about one-upmanship, or the chance to gloat, to countermand David Warner’s latest thought-blurt. Any Australian who knows about cricket already knows Root is a great cricketer. But you want them to see it too, and to feel it, in the way you want people to love a band you love, or a book or a place.
Joe Root being great in Australia. Win or lose, this ennobles everyone’s Ashes. Although, having said that, and if there’s still any slight chance, we do still want to see Matthew Hayden naked.
Root’s hundred felt significant in other ways, not least as something solid in the series for this team, a handhold in the glacier, even a basic freeing up. Are England going to win at the Gabba? Don’t know. But Joe Root got a hundred. Did Harry Brook play if not the worst shot of all time, then perhaps the worst shot yet? Yes. He did. Brook was once again tediously conventional in his attempts at being wild and free, not so much punk rock, more the cricket equivalent of David Cameron listening to The Smiths. But Joe Root did also score a hundred.
And not just a hundred in Australia, but a brilliant one in genuinely tough conditions, and an innings that might just have saved his team in this series. There were moments of escalation and gear change. After three hours of furious focus Root could be seen whirling himself inside out to produce an outrageous reverse swat over what was now deep fine leg, moving his score to 128 off 194 balls with all the carefree elan of a man hurling a television set out of a 19th floor hotel window, and teeing up the 50 partnership for the last wicket with Jofra Archer as the day started to melt a little and ooze England’s way.
Although, naturally, it had to start with the wings already falling off, the drinks trolley floating past his ear, and England’s greatest modern player coming out at two wickets down for five runs. Root was dropped early in the slips by Steve Smith. From there he was into his most ferrety mode, counterattacking with such gentle grace you hardly noticed as he glided into the twenties alongside Zak Crawley, driving stiff legged at everything in his arc, like a guardsman playing croquet.
By mid-afternoon England were 175 for three and poised at the jumping off point. Two versions of elite Yorkshire-dom at the crease. Vice-captain and ex-captain. Numbers one and two in the world. And so the question was asked again. Can they be ruthless here? The answer to which was, of course, no.
At one end Root was simply being himself, easy, lithe, watchful, killing you softly, working out in real time how to play these angles and this set of lines. At the other one Brook was batting like a man who desperately needs the bathroom, batting like Lord Farquharson swishing at the dandelions with his walking stick.
All the while a darkness was coming, shadows creeping across the ground, Brisbane turning a lovely soft green, and the pink ball genius, Mitchell Starc, revving up for the key spell of the day.
Do you run towards this danger? Yep. You do. No sighters, no feet. Just throw the hands at it first up. Trust talent, trust vibes.
The ball to Brook was full, the edge thick. There is no world where this was a good choice, no cool-guy dynamic where it makes sense. Australia had pretty much handed Brook a cue card. This is a plan. Would you like to be part of it? Oh, you would?
It was at least novel in its abjectness. We have seen England bat in Australia like the Tin Man in the Wizard of Oz, stiff and brittle with no heart. We’ve seen them bat like the Lion, without a spleen. Now Brook gave us the scarecrow, batting without a brain. We are the stuffed men. We are the hollow men. We are an attitude, a set of slogans.
And so one half of this England team continued to collapse in stages, while at the other end Root batted not just for his life, but for everyone else’s too. There is at times something exhilarating about watching this, the lack of care, the let-the-world-burn energy. But it is also increasingly tedious in the refusal to learn, develop, find new things. Chances are being wasted here. We could have been anything that we wanted to be, with all the talent we had. But we decided, a fact we take pride in. We became the best at being bad.
Root provided his own quiet rebuke, a triumph for doing your homework, working at your flaws, a hundred off 181 balls, 35 off his last 19 as the day demanded it. England are still in this series because he did the thing, scaled his own final peak, offered a lesson in what talent ultimately means.
Are they going to bowl Australia out now, turn things around? Are they going to learn, to become more Bazball with brains, which is, in the end, not really Bazball at all? Not sure. But Joe Root did score a hundred.
