Joe Root and Jonny Bairstow ignore fixed ideas to show Test cricket its future | Andy Bull

If the format is to thrive in the face of T20’s popularity, we must shelve old ideas about how the game is supposed to be played

Late Monday morning at Trent Bridge and Joe Root, 164 not out, is batting against Tim Southee. In the Daily Telegraph the previous week Geoffrey Boycott explained to his readers that Root is a better batsman than his teammates because, unlike them, he “doesn’t play” Twenty20 cricket. “You never see Root play the scoop, ramp or any fancy shots,” Boycott wrote. “His technique is honed and has been from a young age to play proper cricket.” Now Southee is bowling just outside Root’s off stump, looking to take the ball away. It is only the second ball Root had faced that day. He could, probably should, leave it.

Instead he spreads his feet so he was facing square down the wicket, switches the bat around in his hands and flicks the ball over the heads of the slips. For six. “One thing I think,” Root had said in an interview before the start of play that day, “is that as current players of the game we have the ability to rewrite the coaching manual. I don’t think we should be scared of it.”