Root deserves the royal treatment
Lord’s should rise to its feet to show former captain the appreciation his unstinting efforts for the country merit
For the first time, it would be good if England, on batting first against New Zealand at Lord’s, were to lose two quick wickets. For then Joe Root could be given the standing ovation he deserves.
As lunch approaches at Lord’s, and for a long time after it, the stands are half-empty, with attention focused not on the ball but on the champagne bottles in the Harris and Warner gardens, and on the picnic blankets in the Nursery. In hospitality boxes, backs are turned on the batsmen not the buffet.
So it would be good, just this once, if England were to indulge in their usual party piece of losing two early wickets, allowing Root to make his entrance at No4 when a large crowd are fully attentive to show their appreciation.
Root, after walking down the steps on to the hallowed turf will, as usual, skip sideways to get his glutes working, then run as if going for a quick single. And while he is doing so, Lord’s should be cheering the house down.
Root deserves such a public ovation for the quantity and the quality of what he did as his country’s captain. Over five years, from the spring of 2017, Root led England in 64 Tests, with all the nervous energy that entails, especially during Covid.
Control the controllables, sure, but never has an England captain had to deal with so many uncontrollables of this magnitude and nature.
He started his reign as captain as a good player and ended it as a great one – arguably the greatest England have ever had
Naturally enough, Root won the most Tests as England captain, 27, and lost the most Tests, 26. At least he finished in credit, just.
Distinguished predecessors such as David Gower, Graham Gooch, Mike Gatting and Michael Atherton ended in deficit.
Then there is the quality of what Root did – not as captain, because he was no intuitive genius, but as a batsman. The worse England played, the better his batting became. Whereas other England captains have been gradually ground down, Root started his reign as a very good player and ended it as a great one, arguably the greatest England have ever had, and he is still only 31.
And now that posterity can stand back to weigh up Root’s five-year captaincy, we ought to err on the side of generosity in our judgments.
There were circumstances, in addition to the pandemic, beyond his control – a lot of uncontrollables.
When his senior bowlers departed from the game plan on key occasions, like in the two pink-ball Tests in Adelaide, it was Root’s responsibility, because he was the England captain, but not, ultimately, his fault.
When his young-buck batsmen threw their bats at wide deliveries, as if it was a whiteball game, and got themselves out fecklessly – they might say fearlessly – but undoubtedly softly; it was again Root’s responsibility, because he was the England captain, but not ultimately his fault.
It was Root’s responsibility too, but probably not his initiative, when Ed Smith, as the new chairman of selectors, came up with the bright idea of pushing Jonny Bairstow up to No 5 as wicketkeeper/batsman
– a position so high for a keeper that no Englishman has ever made a success of it – and slotting Jos Buttler in as a specialist batsman at seven.
England used to have a core, a hard and spiky core: Ben Stokes at six, Bairstow as keeper/ bat at seven and Moeen
Ali at eight, followed by three seamers. Never since have England had a core, as the results – the everescalating string of defeats – have shown.
Was it Root’s decision to omit James Anderson and Stuart Broad from the last tour of the West Indies, or did he simply go along with Sir Andrew Strauss’s executive decision? Either way, with history’s hindsight, we can see that England would have been more likely to win that final Test in Grenada, and the series in the West Indies, if one of them had been selected.
So let there be no hesitation if, or rather when, Stokes leaves the field. Root should take over: there is nothing wrong with going back to him. In 2001, when the captain Nasser Hussain broke a finger, Atherton slotted back in seamlessly and captained well for two Tests – better, in fact, than when he was the regular leader.
Root deserves our gratitude and our admiration for what he has done since stepping on to the Test-match treadmill in 2012. For the hours of sleep he lost as captain; for the handsomeness, at times beauty, of his batting; for keeping England afloat in the past year. But above all, thanks are due for him never letting the side down, never behaving or speaking out of order, and for his part in maintaining a standard of decency in our public life.