‘Joe Root is the best England cricketer I’ve ever seen’, claims Paul Farbrace – as former coach reveals why Bazball would not have worked while he was in charge

Joe Root‘s former coach Paul Farbrace has insisted that the batsman is the ‘best he has ever seen’ play for England and predicts he will smash Sachin Tendulkar’s seemingly unbreakable run-scoring record.

The Yorkshireman made his Test debut in 2012 and has gone on to become England’s all-time leading run-scorer, eclipsing Alastair Cook‘s tally of 12,472 while making a personal best 262 in the first match of the current tour of Pakistan.

The last nine months have seen Root position himself at the head of a number of prestigious lists, also breaking his former teammate’s record of 33 centuries for England with a memorable 103 against Sri Lanka at Lord’s in August.

The baby-faced run machine also boasts the highest number of runs in a calendar year for his country, with 1,708 in 2021, as well as the most on a single ground with a whopping 2,022 at the home of cricket.

Indeed, there are very few records left for Root to break but Farbrace, who coached him for three years with the national team, believes he has Tendulkar’s haul of 15,921 runs in his sights.

Speaking exclusively to Mail Sport, the current Sussex coach said: ‘He’s gone past Cook’s record, which is a phenomenal effort, but I expect him to get close to Sachin, if not beating Sachin’s record in Test cricket.

‘He’s no different now to the bloke that I knew when he was starting off in the Yorkshire team other than the fact that he’s got a real steel about him. 

‘He’s a tinkerer. He’s a thinker, and he’s driven to be the best he can be. It’s a really difficult thing to put yourself under pressure every day to be the best you can be. It takes a lot of courage. It takes guts. 

‘A lot of people satisfy themselves with where they’ve got to, and others haven’t got that hunger and drive. 

‘You’ve got to say now that the way Root plays in all conditions against all types of bowling, he probably is the best that I’ve seen in my lifetime watching Test match cricket for England.’

Farbrace joined the national team setup in 2014 as an assistant coach under Peter Moores and departed in early 2017 after a 4-0 drubbing in India which also spelled the end of Cook’s stint as captain and the start of Root’s reign.

During that time, the Yorkshireman emerged as a regular in the England side and as one of the most dominant batsmen in world cricket, taking his run tally from just under 1,000 to more than 4,000 by the time he called his first toss as skipper.

No one has captained more matches for England than Root – with 64 – but his spell in charge was mixed with 27 wins and 26 losses and not a single Ashes series win in three attempts.

Farbrace suggested that the batsman’s game dropped as a result of the incessant pressure of skippering a Test side.

He said: ‘He was never going to turn the captaincy down – to be Captain of England means an awful lot to him, to his family.

‘I think during that period he probably batted a little bit for the team and tried to score other people’s runs rather than just batting for Joe Root and scoring the runs which would give England a better chance of success.

‘He also got a bit distracted by the so-called Bazball way, watching him playing his reverse ramps and all those sorts of things, and the speed at which he was trying to score.

‘I think he’s definitely taken a step backwards, and said, “I don’t need to play that way. I don’t need to be quite so frenetic. I can still score my runs in the way that I score them”.

‘I think he’s definitely gone back to the old Joe Root and I think he’s a lot calmer at the crease.’

Since his mammoth double ton in the first Test in Multan, Root has made a string of low scores, notching just 53 runs in three innings while still averaging 80 in the series.

While watching the action unfold, the memories come flooding back for Farbrace whose connection with Pakistan dates back to the trigger point for their 10-year hiatus from hosting Tests.

Visiting as the coach of Sri Lanka, the Englishman was seriously injured during a terrorist attack on the team coach in Lahore in 2009. 

Six police officers and two civilians died in the attack on the Sri Lanka team in March 2009 by 12 gunmen outside the Gaddafi Stadium, where they were heading for the third day of the second Test against Pakistan. 

England’s current tour of Pakistan is just their second since 2006 and, despite being hit by shrapnel and spending eight days in hospital following the traumatic incident, Farbrace welcomes the return of cricket in the Asian country.

‘I think it’s fantastic that Test cricket is being played back in Pakistan,’ he said. ‘I’ve always said that I’d love to go back, and I haven’t had the opportunity, but I’d love to go back. 

‘Whatever our role was on that day, we have a very close bond. I saw Simon Taufel recently. I see Steve Davis a lot, great to see Ahsan Raza back umpiring. I keep in touch with a lot of the Sri Lankan players, that were involved in that terrible atrocity and I still see some of the Pakistani players from time to time.

‘That brought us really close together as a group of people.

‘My sadness apart from the people that lost their lives taking us to play cricket is for the game of cricket in Pakistan in general, and also for the public of Pakistan.

‘For them to be robbed of seeing their heroes play at home for over ten years, and players that played for Pakistan played their careers without ever playing a home Test match or home One Day International – that’s terrible for them.’

England’s last visit to Pakistan in 2022 was a joyous affair, filled with fanatic supporters, attacking cricket and respect between the sides – and ended in a historic 3-0 whitewash.

Since they beat Shan Masood’s side by an innings in the first Test this time round, things have gone downhill for Ben Stokes’s side. They fell 152 runs short of their chase of 297 in the second meeting after a first innings capitulation from 211/2 to 291 all out.

In the third Test in Rawalpindi, England find themselves staring down the barrel of a series defeat which seemed a world away when they scored 823/7 in that record-breaking day two weeks ago.  

With the Ashes just a year off, the Stokes and Ben McCullum regime still face unsolved questions, regarding Zak Crawley and Ollie Pope’s places in the top order, as well as the make-up of their pace attack.

But Farbrace, who regained the Urn in 2015, remains optimistic.

‘The level of disappointment in England losing the test is actually a massive compliment to them, because we expect them to win away from home,’ he told Mail Sport. 

‘This England team is showing that you can win away from home. Ben [Stokes] is a fantastic team man, and he brings people together, and he gets the best out of people and that’s what captaincy and leadership is about. 

‘Leaders are people, that other people follow. It’s not necessarily about his tactical acumen or his technical acumen. If you’re a good leader, people want to come with you, whether that’s going for a coffee, going to the gym, going for a beer, going out to bat, going out to bowl, going out to field.

‘I think the bowling is starting to take shape. I think the batting has taken shape for a couple of years now.’

Would Bazball have worked during his spell in charge?

‘As an England team we took on [New Zealand’s aggressive attitude in the mid-2010s] in One Day Cricket,’ he said. ‘We never really got our plans that well organised in Test match cricket in our time.

‘I don’t think it’s as simple as just saying they go and play with a carefree attitude. It’s really easy to talk about playing with freedom, play without consequence, play without fear. It’s a damn sight harder to do it.’

Unable to take a proper break from the sport he loves, Farbrace found time to chat cricket with us during a well-earned holiday after taking Sussex to the County Championship Second Division title this summer.

The conversation was pushed back a tad after the experienced coach was delayed returning after booking some tee times at a nearby golf club – it seems that the heavily-discussed favourite pastime of the current crop dates back to a time before the arrival of golf-mad Stokes and McCullum.

‘Golf and cricket have always gone together, ever since I started playing county cricket in 1986, every cricketer pretty much played golf,’ he said, playing his best verbal forward defence.

‘Otis Gibson [former England bowling coach], James Anderson, and Stuart Board would play a lot together. The bowling coach and the bowlers playing together was brilliant because it’s a chance to unwind, get to know one another and relax a bit.

‘As long as they’re playing good cricket and they’re winning, then you get away with it. When you lose a Test match, everyone points to all the things that you should be doing more, don’t they? You can’t win, can you?’

As Root and Harry Brook look to save the game on Saturday, they will be burdened by the added pressure that the side’s next round of 18 depends on them.