“Two!” shouted Ollie Pope. Joe Root wavered at the striker’s end, his bat in his ground, his weight on his front foot. “Two!” shouted his teammates on the balcony. Root had one eye on the ball racing away over the square and the other on the fielder haring in towards it from the deep. “TWO!” shouted the crowd. Pope was coming anyway, dead-set on finishing the last run he needed for his hundred. He, and everyone else in English cricket, had been waiting a long time for this, and he wasn’t going to waste even one more ball wondering whether it was ever going to come.
Pope didn’t even seem to see Root, certainly didn’t clock that he had stopped. He came back for the second run like the sky was falling in behind him and didn’t finish his sprint until he was halfway to the boundary. Root, who had finally set off on the second run when he realised his partner was hellbent on it anyway, turned again and came chasing after him in leaps and bounds across the outfield so he could wrap him up in a hug.
