Time for Root to show aggressive streak
Tourists must play with adventure in final Test Captain needs to adopt Smith’s attitude at crease
Joe Root and Steve Smith lead England and Australia, yet they come from very similar backgrounds of cricket-obsessed families in the cricketing heartlands of their respective countries, Yorkshire and Sydney. So far, in this fraternal rivalry, there has been only one winner.
It was in the dead-rubber Test of the last Ashes series in 2015 that Smith stamped his mark on his team. Michael Clarke was Australia’s nominal captain but it was his final Test. Smith, who had already led Australia three times, was going to succeed – and so he did, in both senses, scoring 143 to achieve an innings victory.
In the last Test of this series, Root cannot afford to allow England to relapse after bottoming out in Melbourne and to get beaten for the fourth time – not if they are to be credible contenders to regain the Ashes in the next series in 2019. Root this week has to turn the England players into his team.
Hammering out a draw at the MCG was a start: only seven out of 47 Tests worldwide in 2017 were drawn. Scoring close to 500 when batting second was another new, encouraging feature. It was the first time in four attempts under Root’s captaincy that England had reached 230 when batting second.
The next steps are for Root to be more adventurous in his captaincy and stand up to ‘big brother’.
From the start of this series he backed off when David Warner marched to the crease like a bulldog on a lead, posting sweepers on either side and donating singles – and Root has mostly done the same with Smith.
Tactically, this plan of denying runs has not worked: Warner’s strike-rate has been reduced but he has still scored the second-most runs, 385, while Smith has totalled 604. Backing off has overtly conceded Australia’s superiority.
Root was unadventurous again at Melbourne when he did not declare on the third evening as soon as Stuart Broad’s rollicking century stand with Alastair Cook ended. A wicket, perhaps Warner’s, in the last three or four overs – with two days to go – would have been worth more than the runs Cook was to add with James Anderson. A declaration then would have been a declaration of intent: Root would have imposed himself on Australia.
Equipped with a leg-spinner in Mason Crane, Root now has more options for attacking new batsmen, instead of letting them play themselves in to run-saving fields.
He has not captained a leg-spinner in a Test before, but he has played all his Yorkshire career alongside Adil Rashid and, in the three warm-up games on this tour, Root liaised conspicuously with Crane. He would often go to talk in mid-over, as Cook would not by the end of his captaincy, and by fielding at slip for Crane – just as Smith does for Nathan Lyon – Root naturally has a more informed view than Cook, who stood at midwicket or short fine-leg for spinners.
Most of all, however, it will be by batting like ‘big brother’ that Root will turn England into his team. He started this series by thinking it was his primary duty to score runs; he has learned from Smith that his primary duty is to bat, for it is only when he is in the middle that Root can guide players younger than Cook, and steer them, and lead.
It will become Root’s team when he bats as long as Smith did in Melbourne – or his predecessor in his unbeaten 244. Root and Smith have been dismissed only once each in single figures, but Smith has been dismissed for double figures only twice, Root six times.
“Making good decisions consistently” was how Smith summarised the secret of the batting form of his life: deciding exactly which shot to play, not being drawn into one speculatively, like Root has been serially. Not only Root either, but Mark Stoneman and James Vince too, whereas Dawid Malan has been like Cook in proving he can make good decisions for a whole day.
Root, just turned 27, has time on his side but he has to learn how to make the most of it. He has mislaid the key since making 254 against Pakistan.
He has tried to score too quickly instead of patiently playing the situation – most notably a horrendous hack, or slog-sweep, when England should have been playing for a draw on the last afternoon in Chennai. He has to bat all day or, as the pros say, “bat time”.
It is not only England that need a fillip this week: so does Test cricket and the Ashes in particular. The International Cricket Council’s announcement of a world Test championship final in 2021, featuring the grand total of one Test between the top and second-ranked countries, does not give Test cricket a significant context: only in the weeks before the cut-off point for the top two countries will it generate interest. So it is still up to the players, especially captains, to make Test cricket interesting.
Only one cricket match has been played at the SCG this season, a Big Bash game. It is because the turf was damaged during the Australian Football League season by Sydney Swans, and it has taken since October to grow the grass seed.
The first cricket match on this ground was staged in 1854, the first Sydney Swans game in 1982. Yet Aussie Rules sets the agenda, taking over the Test grounds and forcing them to install drop-in pitches, which are tolerable for T20 but euthanasia for Tests.