Sunshine boy destined to take England reins
England: JOE ROOT
Age appointed: 26 Tests when appointed: 53 Captaincy experience: Four first-class games for Yorkshire; England vice-captain since 2015.
Australia: STEVE SMITH
Age appointed: 26 Tests when appointed: 33 Previous experience: Stand-in skipper for three Tests, two ODIs and one T20I. Captained Sydney club Sutherland aged 19, led New South Wales to a Sheffield Shield final and was Australia ‘A’ vice-captain. Record as permanent captain: Won 10, drawn 2, lost 5, ave. as captain 69.04.
Bangladesh: MUSHFIQUR RAHIM
Age appointed: 23 Tests when appointed: 24 Previous experience: Bangladesh Under-19s at the 2006 World Cup. Record as captain: W5, D9, L14, batting ave as captain 41.71.
India: VIRAT KOHLI
Age appointed: 26 Test when appointed: 32 Previous experience: Stand-in skipper for one Test, ODI vice-captain since 2012, India U19 at 2008 World Cup and Royal Challengers Bangalore in the IPL. Record as permanent captain: W15, D6, L1, batting ave as captain 59.91.
New Zealand: KANE WILLIAMSON
Age appointed: 25 Tests when appointed: 48 Previous experience: 19 ODIs, 17 T20Is; New Zealand U19 at 2008 World Cup. Record as captain: W6, D1, L3, batting ave as captain 55.00.
Pakistan: MISBAH-UL-HAQ
Age appointed: 36 Tests when appointed: 19 Previous experience: One ODI, one T20I; captained Sui Northern Gas Pipelines Limited in Pakistani domestic cricket. Record as captain: W24, D11, L18, batting ave as captain 50.55.
South Africa: FAF DU PLESSIS
Age appointed: 32 Tests when appointed: 34 Previous experience: Stand-in skipper for five Tests, T20 captain since 2013, vice-captain in other formats. Record as permanent captain: W3, D0, L0, batting ave as captain 49.75.
Sri Lanka: ANGELO MATHEWS
Age appointed: 25 Tests when appointed: 31 Previous experience: Sri Lanka vice-captain; T20 captain from 2014, also led them in one ODI. Captained Sri Lanka at U15, U17 and U19 level, including 2006 U19 World Cup. Record: W13, D6, L15, batting ave as captain 50.94, bowling ave 43.77.
West Indies: JASON HOLDER
Age appointed: 23 Tests when appointed: 8 Previous experience: 12 ODIs; vice-captain of West Indies ‘A’. Record as captain: W1, D3, L8, bowling ave as captain 47.00, batting ave as captain 24.76.
HOWEVER far back you go in Joe Root’s life there has never been a shortage of people ready to say he had “something about him” that marked him out as special.
There are those who remember him as a child playing “serious” cricket shots with little brother Billy on the boundary edge as dad Matt played club games in the middle at Sheffield Collegiate’s ground.
There are those who have firsthand knowledge of his years at King Ecgbert School and Worksop College or Yorkshire’s academy and into its senior ranks who were taken by his singular application and mature head.
And there are those in the ECB’s England Performance Programmes who identified a player who had not only the talent and temperament to make it but also exhibited leadership potential from an early age.
So, after yesterday’s much-anticipated announcement that Root will be the 80th England Test captain, succeeding Alastair Cook who stepped down last week, the chorus of ‘I told you so’ up and down the country will have been deafening.
Root has carried the burden of ‘future England captain’ for at least the last eight of his 26 years. The real test has now come.
Root is the product of a cricketmad family. His father Matt was a decent club cricketer for Sheffield Collegiate CC where he played with Michael Vaughan and it was outside the boundary ropes at Abbeydale Park with his brother Billy, that his love for the game first sparked.
Nick Gaywood, who played at Collegiate with both Matt, Joe and Vaughan, remembers the two brothers playing mini-games while REPORTS the Yorkshire progressed.
“We first noticed Joe and his brother Billy playing with a bat and a wind ball around the boundary edge,” he said. “It was always entertaining because it was a miniversion of what was happening on the pitch – proper shots, running between the wickets.
“It was obvious they could play and Joe was playing senior cricket by the time he was 12 and captaining Yorkshire at Under13s.
“He wasn’t big or strong but he had an instinctive understanding of the cricket. He just understood it.”
Root went to King Ecgbert School in Dore, near Sheffield – the same school Jessica Ennis-Hill attended – but switched from state to private and Worksop College where he was a weekly boarder on a cricket scholarship at 15.
By that stage his talent was apparent. He was embedded in Yorkshire’s system and England were not far behind. In 2010 he was on an Under-19s tour of Bangladesh and a World Cup in New Zealand.
Root made his Test debut in Nagpur in December 2012 and was being tested as a future captain, leading the Lions against New Zealand in tour matches the following summer. Throughout he has retained a glint in his eye: never afraid to take the mickey out of senior colleagues, see the funny side of difficult situations, or poke an opponent or two. His reaction to adversity – like when Mitchell League matches Johnson was trying to knock his helmet off in the 2013-14 Ashes – has generally been to smile. Ryan Sidebottom, whose peg at Yorkshire is next to Root’s, said: “He was quiet at first when he came in the dressing room but confident. But slowly we got the real him. He’s definitely cheeky but not arrogant.”
The captaincy may clip some of the edges from that cheekiness but hopefully not too much – having his sunny outlook has done no harm to his career so far. Indeed it has helped to keep him grounded.
Root will have his hands full with the England captaincy but it has also come to him at the right time.
Last year he married Carrie and in January the pair celebrated the arrival of their first child, Alfred William.
Last month Root was asked whether he felt experienced enough to take over the captaincy should Cook stand down.
“It’s one of those things you have to learn on the job,” he said.
“Being a dad you don’t know what to do until you just sort of go with it and see how it goes. I imagine that it would be very similar.
“I’d like to think I could do it. I feel that I would have something to offer.”
Plenty of people will be proved wrong if he fails. IF THERE is one slightly surprising element to the appointment of Joe Root to the England Test captaincy it is that it took the ECB six days to make the formal announcement.
For all that Andrew Strauss insisted “no one was ruled out”, the list of likely candidates started with Root and pretty much ended there.
Yet before anyone is tempted to suggest that indicates that the ECB were left to choose from a poor field, they are wrong.
The main reason there were no other obvious candidates was that no one could hold a torch to the blindingly obvious choice – over the course of the past four years, Root has blown all the opposition out of the water.
He is England’s best batsman, and by some margin, and has been for at least three years, building an average of almost 53 in as many Tests, rising to third in the ICC rankings and scoring 11 centuries.
In giving him the main job England are banking he has the temperament to keep that going under the pressure of the captain’s