Root growing into captaincy after hit and miss tenure

Joe Root must take another important step against India at Lord’s as he begins to put his stamp on the England captaincy.

The man himself is in no mood to crow about his part in the hard-earned victory in England’s 1,000th Test at Edgbaston which put them 1-0 up in this Specsavers series.

Ahead of the second Test, which starts today, having duly announced rising star Ollie Pope will make his debut at number four, Root deftly deflected any suggestion that he was the orchestrator of a 31-run win which hogged the back pages for all the right reasons last weekend.

Since then, cricket coverage has deferred to the Bristol Crown Court case which takes Ben Stokes out of the equation for the second Test. Root made clear at his pre-match press conference that he would be answering no questions on that topic, but did reflect on the collective effort which helped England prevail in Birmingham.

“Ultimately, regardless of what you do as captain, your players have to perform – and I thought they were exceptional,” he said.

“It’s not for me to take the credit for their hard work.

“Under pressure we stayed calm... it would have been easy for us to chase the game on that last morning, but we didn’t. It’s nice to know our thinking is right and we’re able to follow through on that when it really matters.”

Root contributed a crucial first-innings 80, then kept making the right calls with bowling changes – right down to the makeor-break fourth morning.

After a hit-and-miss tenure so far – more defeats than victories in 17 Tests in charge, a miserable winter and a winless sequence extended to eight at Lord’s in May – a second consecutive success was a muchneeded morale boost.

“It does take a little bit of time to get used to things ... there has been a lot of learning throughout the year-and-a-half,” he said.

“[But] I think from the start of this summer I had a real clear idea about how we want to go about things.”