Joe Root has scored 2,428 runs against Australia but averages only 35.68 there. He has never scored a hundred in Australia despite a stellar career elsewhere.

The headline in The West Australian didn’t waste any ink. As Joe Root landed for yet another Ashes tour, the local paper greeted one of Test cricket’s great modern run-machines with a two-word sledge: “Average Joe.”

Strip away the provocation, and the numbers explain why Australia still feels it can needle him. Root arrives as one of the top three run-scorers in Test history - 13,543 runs at an average of 51.29 with 39 centuries - yet one country that obsesses over Ashes legacy more than any other is still the one place where he has never made a Test hundred and never won a Test.

Root’s career is absurdly good. But put Australia a

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