England and Root reward fans’ optimism with riotous batting

T ickets for this Test went on sale last September, and so the vast majority of fans at Trent Bridge on Sunday will have reserved their seats months in advance. Really, you have to admire the leap of faith involved there.

Batting collapses. Erratic weather. Covid postponements. For much of the last few years, buying a ticket to watch England play Test cricket has been an act of the purest optimism: the sporting equivalent of playing the lottery.

Whatever the good people of the east Midlands thought they might see when they entered their credit card details last winter, it probably wasn’t this. Ollie Pope nailing down the No 3 spot with a glorious century. Ben Stokes lawlessly clouting some of the world’s best fast bowlers. England blazing 383 runs at more than four an over and wrestling back control of a match that 24 hours earlier had seemed like a lost cause.

Which was why, whatever the final result, it was a quietly seismic day in the evolution of this side. England’s blitz may not save them the match, or even the series. But the shift in tone and tempo from the dying days of the Joe Root era was clear and stunning: not so much a red-ball reset as a red-ball rejoicing. On a breezy and tumultuous day in Nottingham, England finally rediscovered their sense of fun.

Related: Pope and Root centuries light up England’s reply against New Zealand

Nobody was having a better time than Root himself. The temptation will simply be to file his 28th Test century away with all the others: the latest entry in an infinite scroll of excellence. But there was something different about this innings, a madness to his method. You could see it in the way he bounded down the steps long before the tea interval was over, just desperate to get