The most Bazball thing about Bazball has been the reinvention of Joe Root into an even more spectacular Test match batsman than he already had been before Ben Stokes took over the reins. We don’t need data to confirm that the frequency of Joe Root playing or attempting to reverse sweeps to spinners and reverse scoops to pacers has risen since he left captaincy and attained unprecedented freedom under Stokes and Brendon McCullum.
That was on display again on the first day of the first Ashes 2023 Test, at Edgbaston as Joe compiled a terrific century to take England to over 350 with the team’s run rate always hovering around 5 runs per over mark that pushed Australia on the back foot with their field placements.
With the England team filled with some powerful T20 ball-strikers including Ben Duckett, Harry Brook, Ben Stokes, Jonny Bairstow, and Moeen, who would have bet for Root to hit the first six of the Ashes 2023?
And he did it in some style: a reverse scoop to the metronomic Scott Boland, who had a scintillating bowling average of 15 heading into this first Ashes Test that had kept Mitchell Starc out of the XI?
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Ben Stokes won the toss and elected to bat. Zak Crawley started with a first-ball boundary and the rest of the batters continued on that, with English star batter scooped sixes – not one, but two, as another came later in the third session to Aussie skipper Pat Cummins as well – and his big knock the highlight of the day.
On the 5th ball of the 53rd over of England’s innings, Scott Boland being Scott Boland, pitched it on length outside off-stump in the hope that English batting maestro might nick it. But the former England skipper had other plans: Root made a big movement of his back foot and planted it in line with the ball and his position was almost horizontal, almost parallel with the stump and perpendicular with the incoming ball. He brought out the reveser scoop or the reverse ramp and sent it over the slips and over the boundary for a maximum.
Watch: Joe Root’s stunning reverse ramp shot entertains the Edgbaston crowd
Anyone know what Rooty had for tea? 🤔
He RAMPS Scott Boland for six! 🔥
We’ll have what he’s having! 😉 #EnglandCricket | #Ashes pic.twitter.com/ajXQi3biYK
— England Cricket (@englandcricket) June 16, 2023
