Root faces challenge to impose authority on team
Skipper has dilemma of stamping mark on team while under pressure to deliver series victory
Mentor to Ben Stokes is not a role an England captain would relish. Running a team and scoring runs are hard enough without having to play priest and protector to a troubled soul. Joe Root is not looking beyond the next five days as he seeks a victory that would bolster his leadership.
Root needs a series win and Stokes can help provide it – so straight back into the team he goes, over the fallen Sam Curran, England’s star at Edgbaston.
Success here would leave India 3-0 down with two to play and advance England’s Test team on several fronts. The player pool has deepened, rotation is in vogue, and Root now has a chance to escape a run of no series wins in three and only two in the past eight.
With eyes on that prize, it was easier for him to wound Curran three matches into his Test career than keep Stokes in the doghouse. The public’s misgivings – entirely reasonable – are not a hungry captain’s concern, though Root was also careful not to portray Stokes as reborn just yet.
Would the captain pull him into line where necessary, as Trevor Bayliss, the coach, insists he has in the past, and help him find a smoother path?
Root was circumspect: “I think as captain you want to make sure everyone’s doing everything they can to help this team move forward. In terms of Ben, his cricket and his commitment is always there.
“I think it’s a bit more complex than that. There’s lot of things that still need to happen. We have to wait and see, we can’t really look too far ahead until a lot of things have taken place. Stuff to consider further down the line.”
That was a reference to the cricket discipline committee’s far-off hearing on the conduct of Stokes and Alex Hales in Bristol last September.
Root is not second-guessing that outcome but is not hanging around either in his quest to finish India off.
In Australia at the Ashes, it was popular to ask when this would become “Joe’s team”. In a year, people said, Root would have kicked out the carousers and shaped this side in his image. But the Stokes saga has stalked him ever since England took off for Brisbane en route to a 4-0 pasting. Now, after England’s wins in Birmingham and at Lord’s, pragmatism shines brighter than principles.
From Root’s perspective, if not Curran’s, you can see the sense in opting for the best possible starting XI. Root even admitted England had spent 48 hours in Nottingham pretty much checking Stokes’s fitness to return.
“That was what the two practice days were all about,” he said on the Trent Bridge squash court where Brian Clough used to whip balls around with Garry Birtles, his Nottingham Forest striker.
If not quite channelling Clough, who would have told us all to sod off with our ethical probings, Root was unabashed in setting out England’s priorities. To him, the right course was obvious, even if dropping Curran had been a “difficult” step. The not-guilty verdict for Stokes in Bristol and the management’s decision to restore him instantly to the squad handed Root an extra weapon to seal the series win. He was not about to leave it in its sheath.
Curran has scored 147 runs in Test cricket and taken eight wickets. Stokes has 2,606 and 104. Thus, it was easy for Root to say: “Sam misses out, Ben comes into the side.”
Root himself has scored 19, 80 and 14 in this series, at 37.66, but has the look of a captain on the up. The toss and the weather have ridden to his assistance, along with superb English bowling, particularly by James Anderson.
The 190 Root scored on his debut as captain at Lord’s two years ago was a false indicator of his capacity to convert fifties to hundreds while also sporting the robes of office.
His last Test century was against West Indies in August last year, and while a Test average of 51.90 is proof of his consistency, there is a desire to see him push on beyond 13 hundreds in the five-day game.
On the diplomatic front, this is his chance to impose his authority on Stokes once and for all. “I sat him down yesterday, just me and him, and asked him where he was at,” Root told us.
This was his moment to press home the culture change that started when he and Eoin Morgan agreed to make changes that cover “more than the actual cricket itself ”.
But in the end, for the captain, the great moral dilemma of the week was not complicated. Root said: “You don’t want to leave someone like Ben out.”
Would he pull Stokes into line and help him find a more smooth path?