You have to wonder what Joe Root was thinking after he lost his off stump. Over the last two years, Joe Root has been the world’s best batsman: averaging 65.6 in 2023, 44.6 in 2024, and 63.4 in 2025 before Perth.
Sitting on 13,551 Test runs, second only to Sachin Tendulkar, Root is a player who has outgrown early vulnerabilities and transformed into a run machine.
And yet here he is, wafting at something he should’ve, I daresay, would’ve normally left, undone by a bowler who historically doesn’t even dismiss him. You don’t bring on Starc for Root. You bring on Cummins, or Hazlewood, or Boland, or even Green. But when England and Root are under the southern sun, nothing seems to matter. Because whatever happens, whatever the situation, however many runs you’ve scored in the past, the story always ends the same.
Root knows this better than almost anyone. In 2017-18, the Australian conditions had him hospitalized, after four and a bit Test matches in the field, he’d been emptied by the heat and at the mercy of Steve Smith. The English players seemingly only there to be shuffled, just for Smith to hit it into a different gap. Two tours as captain ended with 8 losses and two draws, with the rain being England’s most effective player.
The debacle of the 2021 series resulted in an enquiry into English cricket itself. One of the lasting images of that tour is Ollie Robinson backing away just to lose his stumps to a full toss. The final wicket to fall for a team that seemed to want to get back on the plane, even before Rory Burns had lost his leg stump.
There have been moments when England has looked like a remote threat, even if they have been fleeting. If James Vince hadn’t been run out at the Gabba and Smith hadn’t done his best impression of Bradman, Root may have at least claimed one victory. But you can’t win test matches with what-ifs. Root now has the opportunity to take another record, to be the man with the most matches in an away country without a win.
For the moment, he shares it with Kapil Dev, who in his 15 matches in Pakistan couldn’t get over the line.
Before Travis Head undressed McCullum’s men, England were in the best position they’ve been in the last 15 years to win a test match in Australia. Effectively, a hundred runs ahead with 9 wickets left in the shed. Australia was staring down the barrel of another defeat in Perth.
And then on cue, England began their inevitable march to defeat.
Boland got rid of three: Duckett, Pope, and Brook, all for eleven runs. It was Root and Stokes at the crease. Australia had clawed their way back to parity, but England, on a flattening pitch, still could scramble their way to a lead of around 275 runs.
Root steers it into the backward point region, a favorite shot of his. Green tumbles, but the ball beats him. Usually, Root would collect a single and face the music from the other end, but Smith had a man stationed there. Weatherald swoops in to pick up the ball, and Root is a couple of steps down the wicket, arms raised, wrists upturned, asking Stokes the question. It was the non-strikers’ call; it was behind square. Either way, Root must retreat. No run.
Next ball, Starc hangs one outside off stump, and Root decides to have a flirt. Having just watched Brook and Pope play away from their body, he must still think it’s a decent idea. His feet are absolutely nowhere, and the ball doesn’t find second slip; instead, it finds his stumps.
In many ways, Root embodies the very best of Bazball. He is a version of that dream final product where you have players who will ramp the bowl if they wish, but also remember the forward defence exists. A player capable of shifting gears and not getting stuck in sixth. Root is a player who should never, ever be out to that ball in that moment.
And yet he is. Of course he is. How could he not be?
Joe Root doesn’t fall just because of the false shot. He falls because in Australia, that is simply what happens to England.
Head’s sensational innings should not give England an out. They cannot chalk up their latest defeat merely to being outdone by a moment of brilliance. The game was lost by their batters’ refusal to capitalise on a cornered Australia.
McCullum and Stokes will rightly say that their England side has come closer than any other in the last decade to claiming a test victory in Australia. And it only took them a day and a half to nearly put the hosts on the canvas.
But the fear remains that this was their best opportunity. A pace attack firing on all cylinders in their first outing, looked a shell of their performance from just the day before, floored by Travis Head’s sucker punch.
The second Test is a day-night affair — a format in which the only blot on Australia’s record is due to a Shamar Joseph miracle. Some of the English have never played with the pink ball, and Pat Cummins looks set to return.
It would be remiss of me to end this on a gloomy note. England in the two days at Perth have shown they can put themselves in positions to win games of cricket in Australia. But you must wonder if any of that matters at all, because somehow, whatever they do, it always ends the same way. Is England simply doomed?
Oh, dearie me.
About the Author: Moosa Niazi
Brisbane kid who’s chasing narratives. Cricket, F1, and everywhere in between, trying to justify the hours lost watching them.