Joe Root vs Steve Smith - who is the best modern day Test batter vs India?

Against modern India, these are the two men trapped in an endless innings.

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India have two permanent villains stalking them in Tests.

Steve Smith is batting - or even shadow batting - through every minute of BGT matches. And against England, it’s Joe Root. These two are constantly spamming Indians.

Imagine running in at full steam, only to see Root get off strike by dabbing the ball to third, or Smith shuffling across and knocking the ball to leg. Over and over again. Both of these players are fairly wedded to their methods, so these series often feature the same shots on repeat. Like a kid who knows one move in a fighting game, but does it so well no one can beat him.

India have bowled 17.7% of their deliveries against England to Root when he’s played. That number goes up to nearly 19% when it comes to Smith. So if you tune in to a random over, chances are you’ll see Root or Smith face at least one ball.

The first time both of them played against India was in the 2012/13 season. Root made his Test debut in the last match of the series at Nagpur, while Smith played the final two Tests of Australia’s tour. It was clear from Root’s first outing that he had the kind of game to play against India that many English players simply don’t. Smith was not quite as obvious, but again, he’s clearly made to play spin in ways his nation is not always known for.

In Root’s first match, he wasn’t the only generational cricketer to make his debut - Ravindra Jadeja did as well. Let’s take this match as the birth of India’s reign, and call that modern cricket.

When you look at the best batting averages against India, two more names pop up: Dinesh Chandimal and Travis Head. Chandimal won a Test from 192 runs behind, and played a role in drawing one in India. Head needs no introduction these days. AB de Villiers is a great who’s performed well against India, but still has a cult-like fanbase because of his IPL heroics. And are you even a real Indian fan if you don’t hate the outside edge of Dean Elgar’s bat? Both the South Africans have scored over 40 runs per dismissal. The New Zealand duo of Will Young and Kane Williamson miss out on that mark, but are next in the list.

On match factor, Head stands out even more, while de Villiers and Elgar also overtake Chandimal. But it’s mostly been these six batters who have enraged Indian fans and bowlers.

Unlike Smith and Root, the other four haven’t done it over a long period of time. They’re cameos. The main players are clearly going to come from long careers within the Big Three. And Head debuted quite a few years later. So these two have over 5700 runs against India, which is about a thousand more than the next four batters combined.

Versus India, Root has the sixth-most runs against any opposition ever, and Smith is also in the top 50 list. Root has 800+ runs more against India than second place; Smith is fourth. These are India’s two final bosses - perhaps never more obvious than in the last Test, where the rest of England were exposed once Root was dismissed.

Smith is an overpowered glitch character - the one the devs forgot to fix. He knows all the cheat codes. Root is a precision build: no wasted moves, no missed combos. Like he understands the algorithmic patterns around him.

Against modern India, these are the two men trapped in an endless innings.

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Joe Root has the better average, but Steve Smith’s match factor is higher. It implies that the other top-order batters have averaged less in Smith’s matches. If we assume a match average of over 40 as high-scoring, Root has appeared in 10 such games out of 35, while Smith is at 5 out of 24.

Three of those five matches for Smith were in the 2014/15 Border-Gavaskar Trophy. It was an important series for multiple reasons: it was the first Australia played after Phil Hughes tragically passed away a few weeks earlier, and it marked the emergence of Virat Kohli and Steve Smith as the next generation. That summer, those two went head-to-head. Smith had the most runs in that series, albeit facing a weaker attack than Kohli.

But despite that level of run-gluttony, it perhaps wasn’t Smith’s magnum opus versus India. That came when he toured and piled on almost 500 runs with much less help, in away conditions. And Australia came into that series after a bad run in Asia.

Looking at the averages by each individual series, the first time it drops below 30 is in the 2022/23 season in India. The final Test at Ahmedabad was a runfest, and he couldn’t cash in. Even in the most recent Border-Gavaskar Trophy, his average wasn't particularly flattering, but his two tons certainly were. It showed he’s still not lost it, and he finished as the third-highest run-getter of the series, only behind Head and Yashasvi Jaiswal.

This means Smith has two all-time great series, home and away. Contextually, he was pretty good in the others too, apart from the last India tour.