Aman
Test Captain
- Joined
- Jan 16, 2013
- Runs
- 47,061
Yes, the team who didn't even score a winning run or won the Final
-
Contact the PP Team
Does Joe Root deserve to be part of Fab 4 anymore?
- Thread starter Joseph Gomes
- Start date
Cuts_and_cuts_hard
Tape Ball Star
- Joined
- Mar 28, 2017
- Runs
- 796
It's because an inability to score hundreds is a much more crippling flaw than having mediocre reords in a few countries over a handful of matches.
Williamson certainly isn't perfect but there's no doubt he's the better test player. Root is averaging in the 30s over the last 18 months, of course he's going to get criticism.
Aman
Test Captain
- Joined
- Jan 16, 2013
- Runs
- 47,061
Mamoon is bitter because he's been proven so badly wrong.
For years he banged on about Root being great, the last two years he's been bog average with dozens of batsmen in the world being better than him.
This is someone who plays so much Test cricket and has time to aclimitize to conditons and score 100s but his record is pretty dire for a supposed top tier batsmen.
If he weren't English, no one would talk about him. Mamoon wouldn't even rate him.
Last edited:
Yeah I agree. Although Mike Hussey was a class act. Just not there enough to warrant the hype. Will never forget how he destroyed Ajmal in a semi final of twenty20.
James
World Star
- Joined
- Jan 8, 2006
- Runs
- 50,804
- Post of the Week
- 2
Root is a good example of why I would always take a glory-or-bust high averaging player over a super-consistent high averaging player.
Sure in most Tests young Joe will usually get at least one half-century, but unless it’s a very low scoring game then such innings are never going to directly affect the result - indeed I can’t even remember the last time he played the match-clinching hand.
Pietersen was a much better batsman for England, yes he registered quite a few careless single-figure scores, BUT when he “got in” you just knew he would be all over the bowlers and would hold the game in the palm of his hand.
Sure in most Tests young Joe will usually get at least one half-century, but unless it’s a very low scoring game then such innings are never going to directly affect the result - indeed I can’t even remember the last time he played the match-clinching hand.
Pietersen was a much better batsman for England, yes he registered quite a few careless single-figure scores, BUT when he “got in” you just knew he would be all over the bowlers and would hold the game in the palm of his hand.
Last edited:
Root is just not in the league of Smith, Kohli and Williamson. You cant win test matches by scoring 50s and even those 50s are getting hard for Root to score as he has been worked out. Cant believe how he can be the top teir batsman by failing to score a 100 in last 2 ashes series. Failing against Ind whole series. He failed vs Nz in Nz.
Add to that he has 2 away 100s and one of them was on a very flat pitch.
You see batters like Smith and Kohli and Williamson to a slightly lower extent shape games by scoring daddy hundreds. Smith is particularly ruthless as he has outscored Root, Kohli and , Williamson comfortably in their own backyards.
Root is like a boy who could never really beacome a man despite growing older. To become a man you have got to score hundreds. Inability to score hundreds is worse than poor overseas record
Add to that he has 2 away 100s and one of them was on a very flat pitch.
You see batters like Smith and Kohli and Williamson to a slightly lower extent shape games by scoring daddy hundreds. Smith is particularly ruthless as he has outscored Root, Kohli and , Williamson comfortably in their own backyards.
Root is like a boy who could never really beacome a man despite growing older. To become a man you have got to score hundreds. Inability to score hundreds is worse than poor overseas record
To this date Pietersen is my favorite English batsmen. He may not have been super consistent but the guy was a impact batsmen. Whose innings in a Test match changed the tempo of the innings. The way he destroyed bowlers in test cricket no Englishmen could ever do. What a miss by England.
Danyaalr01
First Class Player
- Joined
- May 14, 2019
- Runs
- 2,656
But you're happy to overlook Root's record in NZ and Bangladesh. Kane Williamson may have done badly in SA, Sri Lanka and England, and average in India, but he is outstanding everwhere else.
Root at the moment is useless everywhere including home. The only thing is that he has age on his side so he has time to recover. It's time to admit that Root is no longer part of the Fab 4 and is a 2 levels below Smith and Kohli and a level below Williamson.
The way things are going, Babar will overtake Root by mid next year.
Ab Fan
Senior Test Player
- Joined
- Sep 24, 2015
- Runs
- 27,940
He is a level below Amla in tests and at same level to him in ODI cricket, ignoring that Amla was averaging 59 at his peak while Root at max is around 52-53 in ODI cricket.
- Joined
- Oct 2, 2004
- Runs
- 217,977
Joe Root says he has "always looked up to" England's World Cup-winning captain Eoin Morgan in how he has approached his job as skipper of the Test team.
Root was a key member of Morgan's team that turned round their white-ball fortunes over the last four years, going from an embarrassing group-stage exit in the 2015 World Cup to winning the tournament on home soil in 2019.
Speaking on the latest 'lockdown' Sky Cricket Podcast with Ian Ward, Nasser Hussain and Michael Atherton, Root admits his aggressive approach adopted from his time in the white-ball team initially got him in trouble but believes he is now finding his way.
"I've always looked up to Eoin's captaincy and tried to pick his brains," said Root. "Try to take from his knowledge of cricket and better my understanding.
"To start with, I probably tried to use too much of it and tried to almost over-complicate certain aspects of Test cricket by trying to force the game too much.
"I was trying to be too expansive and I was too rigid in that, not understanding that there are certain times, certain passages and certain conditions where you have to be a bit more pragmatic.
"Over time, we've now developed a very clear way of how we want to perform, which should travel well wherever we go.
"But I think there are certain things that you only learn by doing, by putting yourself in those situations and trying things.
"Of course it's a results business and you want to find that solution very early on. It didn't quite happen that way for me as a captain and for us as a Test team, but it's starting to feel like it's moving in that direction now."
Root took over as Test captain in 2017 and initially led England to back-to-back series wins over South Africa and West Indies at home.
But, it's overseas where the team has generally struggled, losing four our of five series - a 3-0 win in Sri Lanka in 2018-19 the only exception - before beginning to turn a corner with a 3-1 series win in South Africa earlier this year.
England slipped to a heavy defeat in the opening game in Centurion, before Root led his charges to three wins on the trot, with the second Test triumph in Cape Town the catalyst for the turnaround.
"Cape Town was the perfect example," Root added, in reference to his optimism that his team are going in the right direction. "One thing we've always had is belief but, for a number of years now, we'd not always married that up with skill levels and smart cricket in certain pockets of games.
"But if you look at the India series [win] at home, Sri Lanka away, we've been involved in some very tight games and we've found a way to win through belief.
"Similarly, at Cape Town, going off at tea [on the final day], we still needed five wickets and we found a way to take them, through sheer belief, hard work and will.
"I really do think that's because the whole group has bought into the way we're trying to do things. It's very clear how we want to play our Test cricket now; everyone knows their role.
"There are more exciting opportunities round the corner that could end in very special memories and results.
"The Ashes in a couple years' time, that's something that, as a team, we're building up towards and it's a big driving force in me wanting to get better every day - doing something special over there and hopefully making history."
https://www.skysports.com/cricket/n...-looked-up-to-eoin-morgan-sky-cricket-podcast
Root was a key member of Morgan's team that turned round their white-ball fortunes over the last four years, going from an embarrassing group-stage exit in the 2015 World Cup to winning the tournament on home soil in 2019.
Speaking on the latest 'lockdown' Sky Cricket Podcast with Ian Ward, Nasser Hussain and Michael Atherton, Root admits his aggressive approach adopted from his time in the white-ball team initially got him in trouble but believes he is now finding his way.
"I've always looked up to Eoin's captaincy and tried to pick his brains," said Root. "Try to take from his knowledge of cricket and better my understanding.
"To start with, I probably tried to use too much of it and tried to almost over-complicate certain aspects of Test cricket by trying to force the game too much.
"I was trying to be too expansive and I was too rigid in that, not understanding that there are certain times, certain passages and certain conditions where you have to be a bit more pragmatic.
"Over time, we've now developed a very clear way of how we want to perform, which should travel well wherever we go.
"But I think there are certain things that you only learn by doing, by putting yourself in those situations and trying things.
"Of course it's a results business and you want to find that solution very early on. It didn't quite happen that way for me as a captain and for us as a Test team, but it's starting to feel like it's moving in that direction now."
Root took over as Test captain in 2017 and initially led England to back-to-back series wins over South Africa and West Indies at home.
But, it's overseas where the team has generally struggled, losing four our of five series - a 3-0 win in Sri Lanka in 2018-19 the only exception - before beginning to turn a corner with a 3-1 series win in South Africa earlier this year.
England slipped to a heavy defeat in the opening game in Centurion, before Root led his charges to three wins on the trot, with the second Test triumph in Cape Town the catalyst for the turnaround.
"Cape Town was the perfect example," Root added, in reference to his optimism that his team are going in the right direction. "One thing we've always had is belief but, for a number of years now, we'd not always married that up with skill levels and smart cricket in certain pockets of games.
"But if you look at the India series [win] at home, Sri Lanka away, we've been involved in some very tight games and we've found a way to win through belief.
"Similarly, at Cape Town, going off at tea [on the final day], we still needed five wickets and we found a way to take them, through sheer belief, hard work and will.
"I really do think that's because the whole group has bought into the way we're trying to do things. It's very clear how we want to play our Test cricket now; everyone knows their role.
"There are more exciting opportunities round the corner that could end in very special memories and results.
"The Ashes in a couple years' time, that's something that, as a team, we're building up towards and it's a big driving force in me wanting to get better every day - doing something special over there and hopefully making history."
https://www.skysports.com/cricket/n...-looked-up-to-eoin-morgan-sky-cricket-podcast
Ahmad-GERMANFC
Local Club Regular
- Joined
- Jul 6, 2016
- Runs
- 1,653
Questions being raised about Kohli now
Mamoon
ATG
- Joined
- Sep 3, 2012
- Runs
- 106,282
- Post of the Week
- 12
An embarrassing thread full of embarrassing posts by the usual suspects who, show time and time again, that they know nothing about cricket.
Robert
Test Star
- Joined
- Nov 4, 2007
- Runs
- 37,604
- Post of the Week
- 1
ICC puts him in the Fab One now.
shaz619
Test Star
- Joined
- Mar 31, 2010
- Runs
- 38,322
- Post of the Week
- 7
jeeteshssaxena
T20I Debutant
- Joined
- Nov 1, 2017
- Runs
- 6,326
Tests:
Smith
Daylight
Root/Kohli
Kohli/Root
Countrymile
Williamson
Smith
Daylight
Root/Kohli
Kohli/Root
Countrymile
Williamson
Last Monetarist
T20I Debutant
- Joined
- Mar 19, 2016
- Runs
- 7,910
If one is only going by form over the past year, Root is clearly ahead of any other test batsman on the planet at the moment.
Smith hasn't really done anything of note in each of the last two Australian summers, obviously not his fault that Australia have only played 9 test matches since the end of the 2019 Ashes. However, his lack of form is just as relevant as Kohli's.
Smith hasn't really done anything of note in each of the last two Australian summers, obviously not his fault that Australia have only played 9 test matches since the end of the 2019 Ashes. However, his lack of form is just as relevant as Kohli's.
Mesozoic
T20I Debutant
- Joined
- Sep 25, 2019
- Runs
- 7,560
Fab 4? He doesn't deserve to be in a fab-20 if someone makes that right now..
Ashwin and Yasir shah have scored more hundreds than him in the last 2 years..
)
Ahmad-GERMANFC
Local Club Regular
- Joined
- Jul 6, 2016
- Runs
- 1,653
Fab 4? He doesn't deserve to be in a fab-20 if someone makes that right now..
Ashwin and Yasir shah have scored more hundreds than him in the last 2 years..
He’s playing better than 2014.
He’s getting starts and making some scores but just not building a big one.
However, I don’t know which I would consider worse. This or 2014. In 2014; it was being undone by one major weakness and on top of that the mental pressure disintegrated him (by his own admission) where to the point he was going to be getting out no matter what type of bowling. Here here is being worked out more.
James
World Star
- Joined
- Jan 8, 2006
- Runs
- 50,804
- Post of the Week
- 2
Does thread title (with the passage of time) now need to be changed to 'who deserves to be part of the Fab 4 with Joe Root'? 
Yeah, he degenerated really quickly. Looks totally unrecognisable as compared to how he used to look in his heydays! Never ever thought I'll witness Kohli so down on confidence on the batting crease.
Bhaag Viru Bhaag
Senior Test Player
- Joined
- Aug 20, 2013
- Runs
- 29,153
Fans these days don't feel confident whenever he is at the crease. Mostly he looks like getting out anytime during his inning. Peak Kohli wasn't like that.
- Joined
- Nov 25, 2023
- Runs
- 20,108
The thread question needs to be rephrased now, "Is Kohli an outsider in Fab 4?"
mominsaigol
Senior Test Player
- Joined
- Apr 14, 2021
- Runs
- 28,370
- Post of the Week
- 2
In test cricket kohli is 100% an outsider now.
Steve smith and root has a resurgence, and Williamson is about certified htb while Kohli is a clown in test plain and simple.
In odi cricket he's massively >>>>>>>>>> All of them
Kohli is way past it now.. In tests - he has overstayed last 4 or 5 yrs with dismal numbers. Am shocked he still plays for Ind test team with the quality of batters available. Cant wait for him to be kicked out of the Ind team. And CT tournament loss looming for Ind with him in the team. I believe it's actually unfair now to compare Kohli to Root or Smith. root and Smith are way above him.
mominsaigol
Senior Test Player
- Joined
- Apr 14, 2021
- Runs
- 28,370
- Post of the Week
- 2
He's been avg 27 since 2020. Crazy how he avg 68 in 2019 (year by year performance) but since then avg 27 collectively.
For 2024, if you remove his century in Perth he averages 11, like yikes.
Meanwhile Steve Smith even during his form slump avg 33, and currently he's averaging 75+ ever since he went into century galore mode.
Steve smith at his worst was still somehow superior to Kohli's even during the early stages of Kohli's slump even though smith faced far tougher bowling attacks and far tougher conditons.
Aussie conditions are some of the harshest conditons for a batter to play pace bowling on.
Indians conditons are tough but raging turners are more commonplace in test cricket. Bilo bounce pitches are only available in Aus.
FearlessRoar
T20I Star
- Joined
- Sep 11, 2023
- Runs
- 30,521
Most Centuries in ICC Events by Fab 4
6 - Virat Kohli (84 Inns)
5 - Joe Root (42 Inns)
3 - Kane Williamson (61 Inns)
1 - Steve Smith (48 Inns)
6 - Virat Kohli (84 Inns)
5 - Joe Root (42 Inns)
3 - Kane Williamson (61 Inns)
1 - Steve Smith (48 Inns)
jnaveen1980
ODI Captain
- Joined
- Mar 19, 2016
- Runs
- 45,404
Jo Root 3 matches 225 runs 75.00 avge 96.56 SR
V Kohli 4 matches 217 runs 72.33 avge 83.14 SR
SPD Smith 3 matches 97 runs 48.50 avge 78.22 SR
Williamson 3 matches 87 runs 29.00 avge 69.04 SR
V Kohli 4 matches 217 runs 72.33 avge 83.14 SR
SPD Smith 3 matches 97 runs 48.50 avge 78.22 SR
Williamson 3 matches 87 runs 29.00 avge 69.04 SR
Bhaijaan
Hall of Famer
- Joined
- Jan 10, 2011
- Runs
- 68,275
- Post of the Week
- 1
Joe Root played on Pakistani flat pitches
jnaveen1980
ODI Captain
- Joined
- Mar 19, 2016
- Runs
- 45,404
Ya.. against Australia not a good innings
- Joined
- Apr 13, 2025
- Runs
- 1,435
Does Joe Root deserve to be a part of fab 4??? I think so!
Most Test centuries against India:
𝗝𝗼𝗲 𝗥𝗼𝗼𝘁 - 𝟭𝟭
Steve Smith - 11
Ricky Ponting - 8
Viv Richards - 8
Garfield Sobers - 8
Most Test centuries against India:
𝗝𝗼𝗲 𝗥𝗼𝗼𝘁 - 𝟭𝟭
Steve Smith - 11
Ricky Ponting - 8
Viv Richards - 8
Garfield Sobers - 8
- Joined
- Aug 12, 2023
- Runs
- 21,709
In claiming a sensational one-hander on the second evening of the third Test against India at Lord's, Root took his 211th catch in Test cricket, passing the 210 of Rahul Dravid to go out on his own with the most grabs by a fielder.
JaDed
Test Star
- Joined
- May 5, 2014
- Runs
- 39,009
Considering his strong suit is test, without Wtc or Ashes in Aus where he performs , he wouldn’t deserve to be fab 4.
BunnyRabbit
ODI Debutant
- Joined
- Mar 27, 2016
- Runs
- 9,231
- Post of the Week
- 1
Kohli is out of the fab 3 as far as tests are concerned. He is well ahead of everyone in LOIs though.
Root needs 71 to become the third highest run scorer in tests of all time and 160 to become the second.
Root needs 71 to become the third highest run scorer in tests of all time and 160 to become the second.
- Joined
- Nov 25, 2023
- Runs
- 20,108
- Joined
- Nov 25, 2023
- Runs
- 20,108
The new boss indeedActually it was always Fab 3 in Tests
===
This has been Joe Root's decade by some distance
He leads the batters with most Test centuries since the start of 2021
[ENGvIND, Joe Root, Steve Smith, Kane Williamson, Shubman Gill]
====
- Joined
- Aug 29, 2023
- Runs
- 33,817
Joe root is a top player. definitley the fab 4 as far as the red ball is concerned...
Similar threads
- Poll
