8 hours ago
11
Harry Brook is the perfect combination of his heritage and the flair with which this England Test team are encouraged to play.
He comes from a long line of Yorkshire cricketers that bat for their lives and then there is the flamboyance, the modern cricketer with all the shots.
The first bit means he has plenty of resilience when faced with tough situations like he found himself in here at Edgbaston.
For his last three Test hundreds, he has walked to the crease with the scoreboard reading 45 for three, 26 for three and 25 for three here. He clearly deals well with pressure.
Yes, on the second evening, he looked frenetic but that was simply because all of England's batsmen's brains were scrambled after 151 overs in the field.
But the break overnight clearly did him some good, because from the start of that 303-run partnership with Jamie Smith, he was back to his normal, calm and composed self.
England batsman Harry Brook pictured celebrating after reaching his seventh Test hundred
It came against India at Edgbaston where his England side were eventually bowled out for 407
The Yorkshireman showed his composure as England recovered from 25 for three on Friday
Importantly he didn't try to keep up with Smith, either. Smith overtook him very quickly, but Brook just kept his own tempo. This was back to Bazball at its smartest.
Brook doesn't just play one way. He's a thinking cricketer and although there have been a couple of times that he has been sucked into things he perhaps shouldn't have - he had a couple of brain fades in the 2003 Ashes with the short ball, and then got a bit bored with Sri Lanka tactically bowling wide to him and lost focus - he adapts to playing the shots in his favour.
His charging down the pitch early on Friday to counter the Indian seamers was a case in point.
Brook is doing it for a reason. There's a method in that madness. He wants to put bowlers off and the statistics show you that he plays it well: 32 attempts at it have got him 92 runs, and he's never got out to it.
It's clever batting: he charges because he realises there's a certain length he's uncomfortable with about seven metres down the pitch and when he sees a bowler bowling that length, he advances to hit him off it.
The result being that for the next few deliveries, the bowler drags his length back to where Brook wants it - a bit shorter, taking LBW dismissals out of the equation.
Next winter, he will have to think about how to play the short ball on the bigger grounds of Australia, because whereas in England you can take it on, down under you might have to be careful.
But his average of 60.37 speaks for itself. Amongst English batsmen only Herbert Sutcliffe can beat that, and by decimal places at that.
Brook and debutant Jamie Smith (right) shared a record 303-run stand for the fifth wicket
An in-form Brook advanced down the pitch to counter India's seamers, disrupting their lengths
Akash Deep (not in shot) eventually ended Brook's 234-ball innings of 158 by bowling him
Brook has had one of the finest starts to an England Test career, and we will be given an indication of how good he is with his reaction to a bowler finding him out or having a barren series.
He's had success for 27 Test matches now, similar to Sir Alastair Cook, Joe Root and Kevin Pietersen before him.
Brook is alongside those three plus Graham Gooch as the best England players I have seen live.
Who knows how far he will go, but with his level headed approach and huge array of shots, he looks to have all the answers.
