Joe Root pushes the limits as England learn brutal Australia lesson in Ashes

Joe Root must have thought he had won this First Test. He had just clung onto a tracer bullet drive from Alex Carey that had threatened to wipe him out to put England on the brink of victory in the first Test of the Ashes.

Australia still needed 54 more runs to win the game and they had only two wickets left but it turned out a wild Ashes ride still had another twist in it under the Edgbaston lights. Australia regathered themselves, the tail wagged like a dog at dinner time and at 7.20pm they finally made it over the line to put themselves 1-0 up in the series.

When the winning runs were hit and Pat Cummins threw away his helmet and bat in exalted celebration, Root walked in from deep fine leg and embraced Jimmy Anderson. They have played in 309 Tests between them but few as enthralling as this one.

Five days. Three hundred and 353 and a half overs. And a game which goes down to the last four overs. What a Test match. Sometimes over the length of a day at a Test match, the crowd’s attention wanders but with the stakes so high and the game in the balance the intensity of every ball was exhausting on Tuesday.

On a slow pitch dying a death on day five, everything happened in slow motion early on. It was hard yakka scoring and taking wickets. Hard work watching too with nails chewed and deep breaths needed to release the tension temporarily.

The weather delay which pushed back the start of play was frustrating but it served to heighten the anticipation from a near-full house who presumably had come up with some creative reasons not to be at work on a Tuesday afternoon. When wickets fell the noise was deafening but so too was the silence in between. It was excruciating, oppressive, draining.

Even when nothing was happening on the scoreboard, there was a lot happening on the field. The changes from England were constant. The half-umbrella was raised and then put down again, the short ball trap set and then released as the bowling strategy was altered and amended. For devotees of rare fielding positions, there was even a straight hit set for the spinners directly behind him in the outfield.

With his raw, blistered finger clearly an issue, Moeen Ali was unable to exert any control in a situation which should have been made for a spinner. So the mantle was handed onto Root who can now expand his CV from England’s premier batter of his generation to include frontline tweaker.

In the longest spell of his Test career, he produced some ripping deliveries on a wearing pitch to trouble all of Australian’s batters. His figures were spoiled somewhat by Pat Cummins’ assault in his final over which yielded two successive sixes but 1-43 in 15 overs was still a fine effort in his unfamiliar role.

With a century in the England first innings centurion, he really could not have done much more for the England cause. Root even turned outfield conductor on occasions, demanding more noise from the crowd. The caught and bowled was a spectacular grab – as well as an act of self-preservation.

He had been unable to cling onto an earlier effort propelled with even more venom by Carey but this time his remarkable reaction catch stuck and Edgbaston went wild. It took England to within two wickets of victory and felt pivotal at the time but these Australians are the world champions and you write off the world champions at your peril.

Cummins and Nathan Lyon used heart and head under crushing pressure in a phenomenal nine-wicket partnership to win the game. Hats off to them and hats off to the Aussies and on we roll to Lord’s. If the rest of the series is anything like as gripping this will be an Ashes summer to remember.