{"id":254781,"date":"2025-11-10T11:46:12","date_gmt":"2025-11-10T11:46:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/254781\/"},"modified":"2025-11-10T11:46:12","modified_gmt":"2025-11-10T11:46:12","slug":"the-ashes-2025-joe-roots-struggles-to-score-a-test-century-in-australia-analysed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/254781\/","title":{"rendered":"The Ashes 2025: Joe Root’s struggles to score a Test century in Australia analysed"},"content":{"rendered":"

Looking deeper, Root’s problems in Australia have come almost exclusively against pace bowling. <\/p>\n

He averages 74.33 against spinners down under, even with his Ashes career coinciding with a modern great in Australia off-spinner Nathan Lyon.<\/p>\n

More specifically, Root’s issues have come while facing full or good-length deliveries from pacers, against which his average drops to 26.9 and 26.2 respectively. <\/p>\n

When the ball is short, even with the pacey surfaces, that average climbs to 63. <\/p>\n

The difference is stark.<\/p>\n

The Ashes phony war began in the summer when David Warner described Root’s front pad as a “surfboard”<\/a>, suggesting he is an lbw candidate.<\/p>\n

While it is true Australia targeted Root’s pads at the start of the 2017-18 series and dismissed him in that manner twice, eight of Root’s 10 dismissals in the last series down under were from deliveries that would have missed the stumps. <\/p>\n

Even in England in 2023, five of Root’s six dismissals to Australian pacemen would not have threatened the timbers.<\/p>\n

Australian plans have changed – or, at the least, Australia are using that inswinger to the pads more sparingly.<\/p>\n

Of those 10 dismissals in 2021-22, seven were from balls pitching 6-8m from the stumps – what is regarded as a ‘good’ length – and nine seamed away.<\/p>\n

It resulted in eight catches between wicketkeeper and gully – four of which were Root attempting to steer to third man off either the front or back foot.<\/p>\n

“They say in Australia horizontal bat shots are the way to go because if it bounces it will fly over the top,” Vaughan says.<\/p>\n

“Those straight-batted shots in Australia, back-foot punches, are OK after 30 or 40 overs when the Kookaburra is a bit softer and it is not zipping off the surface, but in the first 10 or 15 overs when you start playing these straight-batted shots there is a chance it bounces more than you expect.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Looking deeper, Root’s problems in Australia have come almost exclusively against pace bowling. He averages 74.33 against spinners…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":254782,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[1721,101,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-254781","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-cricket","8":"tag-cricket","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/254781","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=254781"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/254781\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/254782"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=254781"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=254781"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=254781"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}