Cricket: England need a new captain
It was billed as the “red-ball reset”, said Ali Martin in The Guardian. England’s three-Test series against West Indies was supposed to mark a turnaround for Joe Root’s side after their humiliating Ashes tour earlier in the winter. Coaches were sacked and players were dropped – notably Jimmy Anderson and Stuart Broad – as the team anticipated a confidence-boosting series against a relatively unchallenging opposition. That’s not how it panned out, said Tim Wigmore in The Daily Telegraph. After drawing the first two Tests, England crashed to a tenwicket defeat in the third, their batting once again badly exposed. Put into bat, they managed 204 in their first innings – but only thanks to a heroic 90-run last-wicket partnership between Jack Leach and Saqib Mahmood. West Indies having responded with 297, England were then bowled out for 120 – leaving the hosts needing just 28 for victory. Kraigg Brathwaite, their captain, duly hit the winning runs on the fourth morning, as the strains of Rally ’Round the West Indies – David Rudder’s calypso celebrating Caribbean cricket – rang out around Grenada’s National Cricket Stadium.
Ignore Root’s delusional talk about his side making “big strides forward” in the Caribbean, said Mike Atherton in The Times. The numbers don’t lie. His team have won just one of their past 17 Test matches, and, for the first time in their history, have lost five series in a row. They now sit bottom of the World Test Championship Table – behind even Bangladesh. Root is a “likeable man and a brilliant batsman”, but his captaincy is untenable – a fact even he must know “deep down”. From a limited range of options, the “straight-talking” Ben Stokes looks the best replacement, said Nick Hoult in The Daily Telegraph. The question is: does the talismanic all-rounder “want the hassle” of being captain?