Joe Root recently scored his 34th century and became the English batter with the highest number of centuries in test matches. But before he did this, he scored a very gritty 62 not-out in another match at an extremely slow pace to help England win the first test match in a three-match series against Sri Lanka.

Now, as regular watchers of test cricket would know, over the last few years under the leadership of coach Brendon McCullum (nicknamed Baz) and captain Ben Stokes, the English have played a very aggressive – ‘see the ball hit the ball’ kind of game – form of cricket termed Bazball. While enjoyable, it hasn’t always led to the best results for the country.

Root’s 62 not-out from 128 balls went against what is called Bazball. It was a slow-gritty knock which led England to a five-wicket victory. In fact, speaking to the media after the knock, Root said that he had been nicknamed “Geoff” in the English dressing room, in reference to the legendary English opening batsman Geoffrey Boycott, who was known to be a slow batter.

Now, the Bharatiya Janata Party-led National Democratic Alliance in its third avatar has also stopped playing Bazball, like it did in its first two terms, and has had to bat on the backfoot – like Root did recently and Boycott before him – on several issues.