Root ready for uncertain future

England captain Joe Root has no idea what the immediate future holds for his Test team but stands ready to guide his side through an uncertain international calendar.

Having just wrapped up back-to-back series wins over the West Indies and Pakistan, contests which took place in cricket’s first ‘bio-secure bubble’ in response to the coronavirus pandemic, England now face a period where they cannot be certain when or where they will play again.

At some stage their abandoned tour to Sri Lanka must be rearranged and they have a commitment to visit India in the new year, but the ongoing health crisis has already forced this autumn’s T20 World Cup to be postponed, meaning nothing can granted.

One possible scenario involves several months of inactivity, followed by a backlog of games that could stretch the resources of the squad and the resilience of the players, but Root understands the challenge.

“We don’t know what the future looks like in terms of Test cricket right now, we have nothing set in stone,” said Root.

“When it does happen it could come thick and fast and there could be a lot of games. I like to think I’m very grateful of getting the opportunity to play cricket for a living anyway, but it really hit home at the start of summer that we could potentially not play a game and that was quite a fright.

“It’s important that whenever we do get the chance to play again that we have some form of cricket before that. There are plans starting to come together, but until things are slightly more settled in terms of a schedule we’ll have to wait and see.

“There will be a lot of responsibility put on individual players to make sure they’re managing themselves and their own games as well as possible until then.” be taken for

Joe Root: Wait and see.