Joe Root has done almost everything in red-ball cricket — all but one thing that has become a recurring headline: he still has not scored a Test century in Australia.
On paper his record there is respectable. In 14 Tests he has 892 runs and nine fifties, a tally of half-centuries only bettered for England in Australia this century by Sir Alastair Cook and Ian Bell. But his average of 35.68 in Australia is the lowest of any country where he has batted more than twice and that blank hundred nags at his otherwise stellar CV.
Why has Australia proved such an outlier? Part of the answer lies in the way Root constructs his scoring. He accumulates an unusually high share of runs behind square on the off side — a strength in English conditions where the ball tends to stay low and the late glide through third man is a profitable option. On the quicker, bouncier Australian surfaces those same strokes become riskier because the ball can rise more than expected. Former England captains have pointed out that shots which play comfortably in the UK can catch extra bounce down under, turning a scoring stroke into a nick or an edge.
The more revealing pattern is that Root's problems in Australia
