Captain Root is our jewel... and the last thing we must do is question his ability
ON Wednesday morning, while there st of the England players enjoyed a day off and stayed around their beachside hotel, Joe Root and the side’s batting coach Mark Ramprakash drove the winding, jolting roads into the shallow hills above Rodney Bay to work at the Daren Sammy National Cricket Ground.
On the way they passed workmen filling in potholes with hot tar and smoothing the black stuff down as best they could with shovels.
Root has been trying to do much the same with a batting line-up that has developed craters at almost every turn of England’s difficult, humbling journey around the Caribbean.
At the stadium, which was deserted apart from TV crews making the first preparations for the Third Test, Root and Ramprakash worked together in the nets and in the heat for two hours as the England captain sought to iron out kinks in his technique.
Houses in pastel blues and pinks gazed down from t he wooded hillsides that rise steeply away from the ground as Ramprakash threw down ball after ball for the England captain, who had scored 40 runs in his four innings in the first two Test matches against the West Indies and who had been starved of practice time by England’s schedule.
His failures at the crease here — three of his dismissals were to balls that were close to unplayable — have focused attention on the fact that his batting average of 42 as captain is 10 lower than it was before he was appointed skip per and led to the first questions about whether the captaincy is affecting his performance with the bat.
‘ I’m not sure it is,’ Root said during an informal press conference on the outfield last Friday morning. ‘Look at this series: I played one poor shot and feel like I have got three balls I couldn’t do a huge amount about.
‘Those questions always come up when a side has lost two games and not scored any runs. You have to be realistic about things and see it for what it is. I don’t think, if I was not captain, I would have been able to play those deliveries any differently.
‘I came up here on Wednesday because feeling like I have got a good block on my own where I can concentrate on my own game and not worry about everyone else is really helpful. Sometimes, it is good to have two hours where you can concentrate on yourself and feel like you are improving.’
Often, in the aftermath of a series defeat, we cast around for scapegoats and in that context it would be wise to remember that Root is the best Test player we have and the greatest cause for optimism that this will yet be a momentous year f or English cricket.
He may not have scored big runs in the West Indies, he may have failed again yesterday, but he is still England’s jewel. It felt strange to see him scratching around for form at the start of his innings yesterday, playing shots that looked out of character before falling cheaply again, but to place question marks against Root’ s batting in the long term would be absurd.
A couple of difficult Tests in the Caribbean don’t change the fact that he remains England’s best red-ball batsman by a considerable distance. The old saying that ‘form is temporary but class is permanent’ applies to his blip against the West Indies.
He arrived in the West Indies on the back of a stint playing in Australia’s T20 Big Bash League and had little opportunity to retune his game before the first Test in Barbados. It is only a matter of time until Root starts to score big runs again. There are few certainties in sport but he is too good, too dedicated, too levelheaded for there to be any other outcome.
There is a more nuanced debate to be had about his captaincy but the conclusion to be drawn at the end of that, too, is that Root is a good skipper who is still learning and will only get better. This is a huge year for our summer sport, an Ashes year, and Root is the only logical choice to lead the team into battle with the Australians.
In this age of instant gratification and short memories it seems to have been forgotten that Root led England to eight victories in their last nine Tests before this tour. He has been growing in stature and starting to relish the job. His presence as skipper when England try to regain the Ashes is something that will inspire confidence.
‘He had a fantastic tour of Sri Lanka in the autumn,’ former Test skipper Michael Atherton, who remains one of the wisest voices in the game, said as he stood on the outfield on Friday. ‘He looked in control. He looked in charge and he was enjoying the captaincy. This tour has been a setback but it needs to be put in the context of what has been achieved in t he l ast 18 months.’
Root has made i solated mistakes here. The omission of Stuart Broad for the first Test was one but it would be wrong to l ay t he blame for t he confusion in England’s selection for the third Test that started yesterday at Root’s door.
Once England decided to turn to the status quo ante and pick a spine of the team with Jonny Bairstow wicketkeeping and batting at seven, then they had little choice but to select Keaton Jennings even though they had appeared ready to discard him.
Jennings played a desperate innings yesterday. It bore the strange distinction that he should have been dismissed twice in three balls, first when the West Indies failed to review an lbw appeal that was turned down by the umpire and then when he was dropped at slip.
It looked like a foolish decision to recall him but that was not Root’s fault. If the selectors had included another opener in the touring party, that unhappy cameo would have been avoided. ‘ This is a hugely important game for Root,’ another England former England skipper, Nasser Hussain, wrote yesterday.
‘He has been out-captained and out-played by Jason Holder. You can have a bad game as captain and he’s had a couple of bad games. He needs to get the authority back he seemed to have against Sri Lanka and at times against India.’
Hussain said the ‘confidence of a score’ would help Root reassert himself but Root never looked like making that score when he came to the crease after lunch. He has not scored a half century in his last eight innings now and he survived a lusty lbw appeal from Keemo Paul with the second ball he faced before chasing the last delivery of the over with an airy waft outside off stump.
It took him 20 balls to get off the mark. In the face of some fine bowling from Paul and Shannon Gabriel before tea he looked, once more, as i f he was searching desperately for form. He had reached 15 when he tried to cut Alzarri Joseph but only succeeded in deflecting a thin edge into the hands of Shane Dowrich.
He trudged slowly, slowly back to the England dressing room. He and his team have become the fall guys in t he f eel- good story of t he unexpected revival of West Indian cricket.
England’s hopes of regaining the Ashes depend on the restoration of the Root we revere when England and Australia walk out for the first Test at Edgbaston on August 1.