Exhausted Root needs to take a break
England captain’s work ethic is admirable but he is showing all the signs of serious burn-out
It was a worrying sign before the game when Joe Root failed to remember where Jonny Bairstow would bat, so it was not exactly a shock that he looked a spent force at the crease. Root scored a fifty but again failed to convert it into a hundred. He dragged himself off the field and it was a surprise he had the energy to climb the steps up the Bedser Stand back into the dressing room.
Root looks exhausted. He has played 24 games for England this summer, three more than anyone else. It is 25 when you include the World Cup warm-up match against Afghanistan and would be 26 if he had not missed the friendly against Australia a couple of days earlier due to the death of his grandfather.
His love of batting and playing cricket is legendary within the England team. On tour to India two winters ago, England were in Chennai and unable to practise because a cyclone had ripped through the city and destroyed the nets at the stadium. His fellow players trooped back to the hotel to put their feet up. Root rounded up the net bowlers and had a bat on the road outside the stadium.
His work ethic and enthusiasm are admirable and part of his charm but England need to tell him to relax and have a break for his own good. He played the Big Bash for Sydney Thunder last winter, giving up the chance to rest between tours to Sri Lanka and West Indies. He played a pointless one-dayer in Dublin in May and turned down the chance to miss a one-off Twenty20 against Pakistan a few days later. With a World Cup and Ashes to negotiate, Root’s workload had to be managed wisely. Instead, he has reached the Oval frazzled.
Add in net sessions, team meetings, press conferences that are becoming increasingly testing with questions about his future and the sponsor’s commitments, and it adds up to very little time away to recharge. It is easy to point to his big salary and earnings as compensation but Root will be judged in years to come not by how much money he has made but by his runs as a batsman and wins as a captain. At the moment, both are in decline.
Root has one more chance at the Oval to score a hundred, otherwise this summer will be his first without a Test century. He is averaging 30.23, his worst to date, and he has not made a matchwinning score since his secondinnings century in Kandy last
November, when he took the attack to Sri Lanka and led his side to a series win.
At the time, it felt as though Root was putting his mark on the England side. Now he is talking about starting over again. One of the key strategies should be ensuring Root stays fresh.
Milestones were achieved thanks to the fact he was dropped three times. He went past Len Hutton on England’s all-time runscorer’s list, moving to 12th, and scored his 7,000th run. Hutton averaged 56 while his successor as a Yorkshireman leading England is hovering just over 48, his lowest since he was finding his way in Test cricket in 2014.
Root was dismissed by the ball of the day by Pat Cummins. It was quicker and moved more than the beauty that bowled him first ball at Old Trafford. Then, he was on nought and it was understandable his feet were sluggish. Here, he was on 57 and his trigger movements had looked out of sync all day.
They were finally exposed when he went back to a full-length ball that hit off stump. He motioned as if it kept low but it hit two-thirds up the stump. It was the ninth unconverted half-century in a row against Australia and he now has the fifth-worst rate of all time in turning fifties into hundreds. It takes a lot of mental resilience and energy to make a Test hundred. It was no surprise this time he ran out of juice.