Zak Crawley reckons there was never any doubt "phenomenal" Joe Root would return to form as the great batter's England teammates hailed their centurion in India.
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Root came into the fourth Test on Friday having not reached 30 in the series while a couple of uncharacteristic dismissals recently led to scrutiny on whether he should tailor his methods to fit the 'Bazball' philosophy.
The argument has been Root does not need to alter his approach and he put his lean patch behind him with a more traditional Test innings to amass 106 not out as England went to stumps on 7-302 after the first day in Ranchi.
The 33-year-old rescued England after they had slipped to 5-112 in a helter-skelter opening session on a cracked pitch and Crawley believes the Yorkshireman is the only batter who could have dug the tourists out of the fire.
"He's probably the only bloke in our team who could have done that knock, he's that good and he's stepped up when we needed him to," Crawley said.
"He's a phenomenal player. We fully expected him to get a good score at some point in this series. He was due, he's the best player we've ever had, and he played phenomenally.
"We're so happy for him and we never doubted him. If anything we know that when he's got a couple of low scores he's even more likely to get the big one, and we expected that from him.
"He deserves everything he gets, he works so hard at his game and he always comes good."
Root's 31st Test hundred - brought up off 219 balls, the slowest century by any England batter under the leadership of Ben Stokes and Brendon McCullum - was marked in understated fashion.
He kissed the badge on his helmet and raised his bat to teammates who were celebrating enthusiastically on the dressing-room balcony.
There was no sign of the reverse ramp he had succumbed to in Rajkot, which proved a sliding doors moment in England's heavy defeat as they went 2-1 down in the five-match serie.
Conventional and reverse sweeps were rare occurrences as Root proved unbreachable in defence, judicious off front and back foot and unfurled his customary late cuts and leg glances behind square.
Australian Associated Press
