A LOAD OF RED BALLS! Five-day game needs help says Root
JOE ROOT says he’s on a mission to make England’s Test side great again.
The red-ball skipper admits the Ashes were a skip fire.
England managed to avoid a 5-0 whitewash – but only because it rained in Sydney so they could scrape a defensive draw.
The Ashes finished a real low as the last nine wickets of the series were lost for a pathetic 56 runs.
You could take any county side over and they wouldn’t have done any worse with the bat.
Of players who appeared in more than two Tests, Root topped the averages for England with a feeble 32.20 – well below his best.
But the other batters were miles off where you need to be for international cricket.
Zac Crawley averaged 27, Dawid Malan just 24, Ben Stokes 23, Rory
Burns 12 and Haseeb Hammed just 10!
There have been many theories put forward as to why England can’t bat in Test cricket.
The main one being the nation has focused on white ball one-day cricket has ruined the longer format.
That has paid dividends with England running out brilliant winners of the World Cup for the first time.
A more pressing problem might be the way the county championship has largely been squeezed into April and May when pitches are ideal for the bowlers.
Root admits the Test side is at “rock-bottom” but wants the chance to turn things around.
He’s likely to stay as skipper but mainly because there is nobody obvious waiting in the wings to take over.
Root said: “I’d love the opportunity to take this team forward and to turn things around.
“At the minute, we are going through a real tough stage as a group of players, and the performances haven’t been good enough.
Appetite
“But I’d love the opportunity to try and turn things around and for us to start finding the performances that you’d expect from an English Test team, which we’ve been lacking of late.
“I believe I am the right man to take this team forward, in my own eyes.
“If that decision is taken out of my hands, then so be it, but I’d love the opportunity to carry that forward.
“And yes, I do have an appetite to carry on and to turn things around, but we’ll see how things unfold in the coming weeks.”
Root believes there are many things that need to change to get England winning again, especially overseas.
He added: “There’s a lot of things to consider. Playing in these bubbles takes its toll and there are certain things that definitely need to change.
“We’ve got an opportunity to really prioritise Test cricket off the back of this, and I’m sure I’ll get an opportunity to express my views, and how I think we can make significant changes to the red-ball game in our country.”
Root is trying to put a brave face on it and has been hinting that the players who struggled Down Under may get another chance.
He said: “The quality’s there, the potential is, certainly.
“There’s a lot of talent, we’ve just not turned it into performances,
which is the bottom line in Test cricket.
“At this level, you’ve got to bang out performances, and we’ve not managed to do that at all on this on this trip as a batting group.
“Far too many times we’ve been bowled out for under 200, and we are never going to win Test matches when we don’t get runs on the board.
Account
“I felt for our bowlers after the performance they put in in that second innings. We really missed an opportunity in the final Test.
“Alot of guys will look at themselves in the mirror and say ‘I’ve not given a very good account of myself ’,” he added. “That’s a frustration. We have let ourselves down because we’ve not given a fair account of what we’re capable of.
“But at the same time, it’s quite evident that Australia, at this moment in time, are a better team than us in all areas.
“It hurts me to say that, but it’s the reality of things. We’ve got to accept that and find a way of being better.”
A trip to the West Indies is next for England with the T20 games kicking off on Saturday. A different team, led by Eoin Morgan, will play those.
But Tests follow in the Caribbean and it will be telling to see how many changes are made to the squad after the Ashes.
Root hopes the Windies tour will be more of a success than his Australian trip.
He added: “Thankfully we’ve got four or five weeks at home, before the opportunity to go to the West Indies and start to make significant improvement as a group of players.”