So, that was embarrassing, wasn’t it? After two supposedly decent performances in the first pair of Tests, England were humiliated in the third. And actually, our performances in the first two weren’t spectacular, and were well behind the West Indies’ accomplishments at most times.
I know it’s easy to jump on an anti-Root bandwagon but surely it reaches a point where you just have to stop thinking ‘he’s a nice guy, though’ and make the call.
It’s not for disliking Joe Root that I have never felt he was the right man to be England captain. I don’t hold with the ‘he’s the best player on the pitch’ argument because to my mind that’s got nothing whatsoever to do with successful captaincy. Obviously you can look at Mike Brearley as the classic proof in this pudding, but also Ricky Ponting and others before and since. I’m amazed that Root has once again come out today (as I write) to say how much he wants to stay on as Test captain, how well-respected he is in the dressing room and how close they all feel they are to being a brilliant, world-beating side.
As far as I’m concerned, that is evidence enough that he just has to step aside and if he won’t step, he needs to be dragged away like a toddler and wrestled into the metaphorical car seat that is just being a batsman.
People (including Root himself, weirdly) talk about him as an excellent man-manager. From where I sit, it looks more like he is popular with his teammates and that is not at all the same thing. There was a weird fetishisation of Joe Root as the last era of winning England moved on through: Graeme Swann used to sing his praises non-stop and it felt almost like he got the captaincy because the ‘old guard’ thought he was a fun little nipper with a good sense of humour and thus lent him their support. But that’s just a popularity contest and this job requires so much more.
While seemingly being this excellent man-manager, Root is also recognised pretty much universally for his appalling use of his bowlers, both fast and spin. And any regular reader knows my thoughts on the Broad and Anderson affair and don’t try to tell me that amiable Rooty didn’t support that whole-heartedly. The cynic in me even wonders whether Root wanted them gone as a symbol of the ‘old era’ that Root himself wants to move away from but the problem is, he is part of that old era himself, too. In pointing the finger at Broad and Anderson, Root has turned on a great neon finger above his own head. Not having better replacements in the wings didn’t stop England from leaving their two most successful bowlers of all time at home for the spring and it shouldn’t stop England from removing Root from his post, either.
I would be inclined to take a leaf from South Africa’s books in the early 2000s, when Graeme Smith was made captain aged 22 and tasked with taking a new team forward. Had Root gone a year ago, as he could have done, I would have been all in favour of giving the job to Stuart Broad, in spite of his lovably crazy DRS opinions. But now there is all this talk of ‘red ball reset’ and as long as Tom Harrison is still in his post and Joe Root likewise, this is nothing more than marketing guff (anyone who was in the Caribbean and picked up this issue of Corridor of Uncertainty will have read my views on that side of the story).
Numerous journalists are talking about Sam Billings as the next captain, effective as soon as possible. I haven’t seen enough of him to comment, but am inclined to trust the collective expertise of those who have shown they favour this idea.
There are so many things to get done to change England’s Test fortunes. I mean, we really are absolutely terrible at the moment, like 1999 against New Zealand woeful, and I just don’t see how any of the urgent changes required to turn things around can start happening while we are all still talking about Joe Root’s captaincy. Clearly we have batsmen with technical flaws; get them into the training centre and fix them! We have a huge skills gap in terms of tactical nous; get the new England captain and every County captain and vice-captain and three more nominated potential captains into a classroom and start teaching them! Now! Not in five years when the ECB has finally developed its leadership programme. Turf out more of the ‘old guard’ England coaching staff, Paul Collingwood included, with Graham Thorpe already gone, because they seem to have just been interested in forming a defensive ring around Root rather than actually making improvements and being accountable to somebody, anybody, for the performances of the players under their instruction.
England Test cricket (men’s) is in a dark, dark place and what’s frightening is how much PR and marketing BS is going into pretending that it isn’t. This is Harrison’s ECB through and through and the first step necessary in any ‘reset’ (such a STUPID term which I totally hate, by the way) has got to be acceptance. This is England’s Alcoholics’ Anonymous moment and the first step has to be to replace Joe Root, in itself an admission that we are failing miserably, and then look forward from there.
Really, if I’d had the brainpower, this whole blog should have been the AA’s 12 Steps as applied to the England Men’s Test team. Maybe next time…