England’s batting mainstay Joe Root’s elegant century in Thursday’s Champions Trophy opener against Bangladesh will reinforce the belief that sound technique is a prerequisite for success across all formats.
A touch player in an England top order replete with power hitters, Root’s unbeaten 133 was a characteristically majestic innings by a batsman almost incapable of playing an ugly shot.
England’s No. 3 battled cramp to anchor a tricky 300-plus run chase, constructing his 129-ball knock in a meticulous manner and staying at the crease for almost 45 overs to score the winning runs with back-to-back boundaries.
Photo: AFP
The 26-year-old England Test captain paced his innings to perfection, using 59 deliveries for his first 50 runs, three fewer for his second and accelerating to score his final 33 off just 14 deliveries.
“Whatever you throw at Joe Root, he proves that he can do it,” former England captain Alec Stewart said on the BBC’s Test Match Special. “He has mastered Test cricket, 50-over and Twenty20 cricket. Whenever England need him he scores runs.”
“He plays safe shots and scores at a run a ball. That is all you can ask,” Stewart said.
Root hit one six, depositing a Rubel Hossain delivery into the stands, but only after he had brought up his 10th one-day century and wanted to control the asking rate.
His calming presence allows the big hitters around him a freedom to play their natural game and Alex Hales demonstrated the tactic impeccably by smashing a belligerent 95 in his 159-run partnership with the Yorkshireman.
Root later combined with skipper Eoin Morgan to secure the comprehensive eight-wicket victory with 16 deliveries to spare, giving England a perfect start to their bid to win a first global 50-overs trophy.
“Joe is the glue in our side,” Morgan, who made a quickfire unbeaten 75, said after England’s triumph at The Oval. “He really has scored a lot of runs in the last couple of years and continues to do it.”
Morgan also dismissed suggestions that Root, whose career-high ODI score earned him the man-of-the-match award, was either too tardy for the format or incapable of big-hitting.
“It’s not slow, it’s actually at pace,” Morgan said. “He has been working on his power hitting and today it paid off. He hit a few into the stands which was outstanding.”
Revelations of positive doping tests for nearly two dozen Chinese swimmers that went unpunished sparked an intense flurry of accusations and legal threats between the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the head of the US drug-fighting organization, who has long been one of WADA’s fiercest critics. WADA on Saturday said it was turning to legal counsel to address a statement released by US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) CEO Travis Tygart, who said WADA and anti-doping authorities in China swept positive tests “under the carpet by failing to fairly and evenly follow the global rules that apply to everyone else in the world.” The
Taiwanese judoka Yang Yung-wei on Saturday won silver in the men’s under-60kg category at the Asian Judo Championships in Hong Kong. Nicknamed the “judo heartthrob” in Taiwan, the Olympic silver-medalist missed out on his first Asian Championships gold when he lost to Japanese judoka Taiki Nakamura in the finals. Yang defeated three opponents on Saturday to reach the final after receiving a bye through the round of 32. He first topped Laotian Soukphaxay Sithisane in the round of 16 with two seoi nage (over-the-shoulder throws), then ousted Indian Vijay Kumar Yadav in the quarter-finals with his signature ude hishigi sankaku gatame (triangular armlock). He
RALLY: It was only the second time the Taiwanese has partnered with Kudermetova, and the match seemed tight until they won seven points in a row to take the last set 10-2 Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching and Russia’s Veronika Kudermetova on Sunday won the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix women’s doubles final in Stuttgart, Germany. The pair defeated Norway’s Ulrikke Eikeri and Estonia’s Ingrid Neel 4-6, 6-3, 10-2 in a tightly contested match at the WTA 500 tournament. Chan and Kudermetova fell 4-6 in the first set after having their serve broken three times, although they played increasingly well. They fought back in the second set and managed to break their opponents’ serve in the eighth game to triumph 6-3. In the tiebreaker, Chan and Kudermetova took a 3-0 lead before their opponents clawed back two points, but
Taiwanese gymnast Lee Chih-kai failed to secure an Olympic berth in the pommel horse following a second-place finish at the last qualifier in Doha on Friday, a performance that Lee and his coach called “unconvincing.” The Tokyo Olympics silver medalist finished runner-up in the final after scoring 6.6 for degree of difficulty and 8.800 for execution for a combined score of 15.400. That was just 0.100 short of Jordan’s Ahmad Abu Al Soud, who had qualified for the event in Paris before the Apparatus World Cup series in Qatar’s capital. After missing the final rounds in the first two of four qualifier