Root looked badly out of form at the end of the home season. He was so desperate for time in the middle that he cut short a brief period of rest to train with England’s second-string squad before their series against Ireland, and would have played in the first ODI at Headingley but for rain.
Yet he remained quietly confident that he would be fine when it mattered – in no small part due to his previous success on the subcontinent. He has now made five half-centuries in eight ODI innings in India, as well as averaging over 50 in both Tests and T20Is in the country.
He made 77 off 86 balls against New Zealand in Ahmedabad, anchoring the innings from No. 3 as England lost regular wickets, then had the platform to play more expansively against Bangladesh in Dharamsala. He made 82 off 68, adding 151 with Dawid Malan; his first boundary was a reverse-scooped six, but he was particularly dominant down the ground.
“I do enjoy playing cricket in India,” Root said on Saturday night, ahead of England’s fixture against Afghanistan in Delhi. “It suits my game quite nicely… It’s something that’s nice to have in the bank when you come to a tournament like this: knowing you’ve done well previously gives you a little bit of confidence.”
Root has always thrived against spin, scoring at a run a ball against spinners in this World Cup to date. “The way people bowl spin out here, [it’s about] finding different ways of manoeuvring the field and trying to rotate strike… finding your boundary options, and weighing up whether there’s a little less bounce or whatever.”
He found the series against New Zealand “frustrating” but, at 32, Root has experienced enough quiet passages that he retained his belief: “You want to have a lot of runs going into it… but it’s about turning up when it matters. In the crux of the tournament, that’s when you need to really deliver.
“When you get here and you’re in that tournament mentality – ‘this is what it’s about, this is where you stand up and deliver’ – it’s a different frame of mind. That’s really helped me coming out here, giving real focus to what we’re doing. It’s been nice to contribute in the first couple of games.
“When you play for a long period of time, you’re always going to have passages of games when you don’t perform and have a little bit of a lull. Can you be good enough to make that a really short period of time? That’s the mentality you’ve got to have if you want to be around for a long time.”
And Root wants to be around for a while yet. England’s golden generation of white-ball players are now in their early-to-mid 30s, and they are expected to make sweeping changes after this tournament as they build towards the 2025 Champions Trophy and the 2027 World Cup beyond.
Root will be 36 by the time that World Cup is staged in South Africa, Zimbabwe and Namibia, but said: “I’d like to go on a safari; it would be nice to tie that in. I’d love to still be playing in four years’ time. The cricket landscape is forever changing, isn’t it? But I can’t see myself not being there unless I’m not good enough and guys have gone past me… I’ll get pushed before [I retire].”
That status is unlikely to mean much to him. Root went past Graham Gooch as England’s leading World Cup run-scorer during his innings against Bangladesh, but said the achievement would mean nothing without another trophy.
“It’d be nice if we win a World Cup at the end of it, because we’d have had two World Cups and I’d be the leading run-scorer,” Root said. “But it’s got to stand for something: the only way it does is if we go on and win this thing, which we know we can.”
Matt Roller is an assistant editor at ESPNcricinfo. @mroller98
