Expect hostile crowds, Root tells Warner
Captain warns banned batsman ahead of Ashes Buttler to keep wicket if Bairstow fails to recover
Joe Root fired the first salvo ahead of next summer’s Ashes by telling Australia’s banned opening batsman David Warner to expect “a slightly hostile environment from the English public”.
England’s Test captain, whose relationship with Australia’s most controversial cricketer dates back to the Birmingham bar where Warner punched him in 2013, was reacting to the news that the batsman had walked off the field in midinnings during a club game for Randwick Petersham in Sydney last weekend, halfway through his one- year ban for ball-tampering in South Africa.
Reports suggest that Warner left the field for a few minutes to decide how to react to sledging from his Western Suburbs opponents, including Jason Hughes, younger brother of Phil Hughes, the Australian opener who was killed by a bouncer in 2014, aged 25.
“You don’t know what was said [in Warner’s match] and you don’t know what was involved and what happened,” Root said. “It is something [walking off in midinnings] you don’t see very often, but unless you know exactly what went on you can’t say if it was a justified thing or not.
“We will have to wait and see what happens when he comes over to England in the summer, if he does [Warner’s ban will expire before the World Cup in England in May and the Ashes in August],” Root said. “I’m sure he will have to accustom himself to what might be a slightly hostile environment from the English public. I wouldn’t wish that upon anyone, but time will tell as to what happens in the future.” Root’s dig at Warner coincided with, and was surpassed by, the stringent criticism of Cricket Australia by the independent Ethics Centre, which reviewed the board’s structure in the light of the balltampering scandal. Cricket Australia (CA) was “arrogant” and “controlling”, said the review, adding: “The leadership of CA should also accept responsibility for its inadvertent (but foreseeable) failure to create and support a culture in which the will to win was balanced by an equal commitment to moral courage and ethical restraint.”
Root, meanwhile, has no complaints about the quality of the Sri Lankan opposition – including Angelo Mathews – that England face over the next four days in their two two-day practice games in Colombo. In the first two-dayer, at Nondescripts Cricket Club, England are expected to use at least 13 players – with Jonny Bairstow likely to rest his ankle ligaments.
“Whether he [Bairstow] features throughout these four days we’ll have to wait and see but, ultimately, it’s about getting him 100 per cent ready to go, whether it be the first or second Test,” Root said.
England’s Test captain confirmed that Jos Buttler would be “the obvious choice” to keep wicket if Bairstow is not fully fit.
Pace bowler Stuart Broad does not seem to be an automatic selection for the first Test, starting at Galle on Nov 6.
Root, speaking of England’s poor record abroad, stressed the importance of “not being shy of potentially playing a slightly different side to what you might have seen in previous winters” – which suggests England will pick three pace bowlers and three spinners.
Root himself would like to continue in the No4 position. “When the weather conditions are extreme, sometimes you might want to change things up, but I think as a general rule throughout the series I will look to bat at No 4,” he said.
A couple of two-day warm-ups were all England had before their last Test series abroad, when they lost 1-0 in New Zealand, and the lack of first-class practice games – of at least three days – has been a major cause of England’s poor record since they last won abroad in January 2016 in South Africa.
On this tour, however, several of the Test players – such as Root himself, Buttler, Ben Stokes and Moeen Ali – have acclimatised to conditions in the ODI series.