For England this was the best kind of disruption. Orthodox disruption. Soothing disruption. The quietly rhythmical paradigm shift. In Ranchi Joe Root pushed the envelope, but did it gently, batting through the opening day with the air of a man reaching down into a deep, familiar place and feeling once again the depth and richness of his own prodigious talent.
Root was in the middle for five hours and 12 minutes, from a skittish morning with India’s seamers finding leap and jag, right through to Yashasvi Jaiswal rolling out some sundowner leg-breaks in the evening light. He batted 226 balls for his 106 not out, scored 48 singles and explored the full range of minutely controlled bat-face glances against the spinners.
