Harry Brook was standing in the sunshine on the Bay Oval outfield after England’s first-Test win over New Zealand.
He usually sends prizes and trophies to his grandma Pauline, who often has Harry’s cricket kit drying on the washing line in her garden that overlooks Burley-in-Wharfedale Cricket Club.
“He was bowling filthy seamers off the wrong foot,” said Root.
Read Also
It was Root who was at the other end when a 19-year-old Brook made his maiden first-class century for Yorkshire against Essex in 2018.
On Friday at the Basin Reserve, a ground with history when it comes to forming cricketing duos – James Anderson and Stuart Broad were united in Test cricket for the first time here 15 years ago – Root and Brook shared a master-and-apprentice stand that hints at a prolific future for England’s middle-order.
Only the rain stopped New Zealand chasing more leather, with Brook unbeaten on 184 and Root 101 not out.
They had come to this Test in very different ways, with varying degrees of happiness in their batting.
Brook is the epitome of the new England under Ben Stokes and Brendon McCullum.
Root had been honest enough to admit he struggled to find the right tempo of his batting in England’s new era.
Seven Tests without a hundred is hardly career-ending form, but for a player the calibre of Root, it is a long time between drinks.
In this rescue act/counter-attack/evisceration of the New Zealand bowling, Brook and Root showed how they can operate perfectly in tandem, while playing in their own style.
Root was the drummer, keeping the beat tapping and the score ticking.
Root’s place in history, probably as England’s most prolific runscorer and century-maker, is already assured.
Maybe he will be challenged by Brook, who is breathing rarefied air with some of the very greatest to have ever picked up a bat.
No England batter has ever reached four Test hundreds quicker than Brook’s nine innings.
Root, for the record, needed 34 innings to make his first four centuries.
Whereas Brook is usually bothering Gilbert Jessop’s 121-year-old record for England’s fastest Test ton, made from 76 balls, he is now knocking on the door of Herbert Sutcliffe and Everton Weekes.
England’s Sutcliffe and West Indian Weekes both reached 1,000 Test runs in 12 innings, the fastest of all time.
Brook, 193 short of that landmark, has the rest of this innings and two more to beat them, or three more to match.
Even if he is out to the first ball he faces on Saturday, it will only fall to 89.67, comfortably the second-highest of any player with more than a Test innings or two.
He is one of the hardest practisers in the England team, often name-checked by captain Stokes – “hearing Harry Brook saying he wants to work on a few things in his game is great,” were Stokes’ words the day before this Test.
This has been a winter when he has pocketed a T20 World Cup winners’ medal and ripped up the records in Test cricket, none of which might have happened had Jonny Bairstow not slipped on the golf course and broken his leg.
When Bairstow returns, England have a batting jigsaw to complete in order to accommodate him.
If Zak Crawley survives at the top of the order, does that mean Ben Foakes makes way and Bairstow keeps wicket?
“I’m sure he’ll be messaging me tonight,” said Brook.
As for grandma Pauline, plenty more awards – probably including bottles of champagne – are coming her way.
