Dazzling Harry Brook could lead a new Fab Four in Test cricket. Who else can be with him?

There may have been a degree of self-effacement in Joe Roots' comments; the great English cricket batsman was never one to tout his own leading qualities, yet his rhapsodic reference to Harry Brook was delivered with conviction. Brooky is by far the best player in the world right now,” Root said of his fellow Yorkshireman. He can absorb pressure, he can apply it. He can hit you over the head for six hours. He can scoop you over his head. go to six. He can turn. He can smack the seam.

The statements of close colleagues are often best taken with a generous pinch of salt, but the statistical case for Brooks' supremacy is growing stronger. The 25-year-old has displaced his senior middle-order partner for county and country at the top of the Test batting rankings, strong Yorkshire, strong England, as the old saying goes.

The 91-ball ton in Wellington that the tourists took out of the oven in the first innings was Brooks eighth in Test cricket and seventh away from home, as much as AB de Villiers achieved in fourteen years with the South African whites. In his next century, Brook will be level with Robin Smith, Ted Dexter and Jonathan Trott; Barely two years into his fledgling international career, he already finds himself in illustrious company.

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And all this at a time when Test batting has rarely been more difficult. Of course there will be Sterner exams for Brook. His record is reinforced by his absence from the torturous tour of India for personal reasons, with his overseas exploits taking place entirely in Pakistan and New Zealand, whose natural topography is not necessarily reflected in their cricketing surfaces. His tendency to chase next to the tree and desire to tackle the short ball will come under scrutiny in Australia, where both the Thoroughbreds and the company will prove difficult.

But there is a solidity of technique and temperament that suggests Brook could well lead the next generation of great Test batsmen, emerging at just the right time. It was ten years ago that the late Martin Crowe named Root, India's Virat Kohli, Australia's Steve Smith and New Zealand's Kane Williamson as the Fab Four, which turned out to be a prescient prediction.

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While they have both experienced fluctuations in form and fluency, they have defined an era of Test cricket, which rose together to take over the captaincy of their country and is now fading towards its inevitable end. While a dusky root glimmers like a firefly in the twilight, Kohli and Smith have shown only fleeting glimpses of past glory of late, while Williamson is increasingly struck by the inexorable effects of age and ailments.

When you start looking at life outside, it becomes clear that the fields of batting brilliance have been lying fallow for a while. With a twenty-innings qualifying match, only one player has averaged above fifty, having made his debut in the period between Roots' first outing in 2012 and Brooks Bow in the summer of 2022: and the short, late and tantalizing Test career of Adam Voges is something of a statistical oddity.

But as every farmer knows, fallow years often prove fruitful in the long run. A fresh crop germinates on fertile grass. You can't help but be mesmerized by the princely talents of India opener Yashasvi Jaiswal, who combines relatively simple technique with the pomp and pageantry you would expect from a graduate of the Indian Premier League (IPL) academy.

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A poor Test against the pink ball in Adelaide has dropped Jaiswals' average to 54.89, but his ton to set up the first Test win in Perth showed the left-hander has the game to thrive in all conditions. While the natural variance that comes with facing the new ball could limit the top-end potential of the Jaiswals average, the middle order is a safer place to boost the score. The 22-year-old has the voracity of a run glutton and the confidence, sometimes bordering on arrogance, that Brook also possesses.

And then there is Kamindu Mendis, who surpassed 50 in each of his first eight Tests. The Sri Lankan left-hander is still three innings away from reaching the set qualification threshold, but his average is in the mid-70s even after a tough spell in South Africa. However, Mendis' quiet innings in England last summer showed he is a man for all circumstances. By comparison, Pakistan's stalwart Saud Shakeel has had a statistically excellent 24 months, but an average of 15 months outside Asia.

Wise judges in South Africa have identified Dewald Brevis as a special talent; West Indies' Alick Athanaze topped the charts at the U19 World Cup, where Brook also played. But out of a desire for natural succession, many will look to New Zealand and Australia to anoint a pair to join Jaiswal and Brook in the next generation. Hopes are high for Blackcaps Rachin Ravindra, so outstanding in his debut World Cup campaign last winter and already with a Test match double century under his belt, while Canterbury opener Rhys Mariu has scores of 240, 185, 87 and 70 in the domestic competition. Plunket Shield competition in the past month.

The top prospects in the Tasman are less clear with Cameron Green's injury problems and bowling workload threatening to hamper his development. Recent debutant Nathan McSweeney is almost the same age as Brook and while he is clearly a batter of steel and substance, he may lack the sizzle and stardust to reach the top tier. 19-year-old New South Wales opener Sam Konstas looks like a player with real potential and could soon join or replace McSweeney in the Test top flight, but some analysts have already suggested a weakness against the nip-backer and inswing, a potential vulnerability that increases as a step up is taken.

Another fantastic four obviously won't be so neatly forged. The shared similarities between Root, Smith, Kohli and Williamson were striking; With an age difference of two years and two months, the four right-handers achieved captaincy and pivotal status at similar times. Just as remarkable as Crowe's prescience is that the quartet have all excelled in the incessant debate over whether the individual is the greatest of the group, which can only be had because each has become the best version of themselves. Even as a new generation emerges, they are a special cohort worth enjoying.