It was the 181st delivery that Joe Root tucked around the corner. But the relief carried the weight of the 2,213 leading up to that ball from Scott Boland, more than 12 years after playing - and missing - his first on an Ashes tour, at this very ground.

When he walked onto The Gabba as a 22-year-old in 2013, for his first taste of pure anti-English Australiana, no thought would have been given to the present day. Root was the anointed one; a Yorkie talent far greater than what existed, and what may come. At no point in his prophecy was struggle, doubt or blight on a legacy to come littered with enough of plenty else to lift him to be among the greats.

He would not have known then what he does now, and nor would anyone have dared tell him if they could forsee it. That for the next decad

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