Joe Root could also be “passionate” about remaining as England’s Test captain but should he stay in the post after the West Indies inflicted the latest damaging defeat of his tenure?
In January, the 31-year-old star batsman insisted he wanted to begin the process of helping rebuild England’s red-ball fortunes by continuing to lead the team in the Caribbean following their humiliating 4-0 Ashes series loss in Australia.
But a thumping 10-wicket defeat in the third and final Test against the West Indies in Grenada on Sunday condemned England to a 1-0 series loss after two draws.
Root has now overseen just one win in 17 Tests and has failed to lead England to a series victory in his last five attempts.
Nevertheless, he insisted Sunday: “I am very passionate about taking this team forward.
“I feel like the group are very much behind me. I know this is a results-based business but it does not feel like we are far away from turning results.”
And after 5 years and a file 64 video games in cost, a call on Root’s future as skipper would possibly properly have been made for him by now.
But following the Ashes debacle, the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) sacked each their managing director Ashley Giles and coach Chris Silverwood, with fellow former Test gamers Andrew Strauss and Paul Collingwood taking on on an interim foundation.
Until the management vacuum on the prime of the ECB is stuffed, and given England’s subsequent Test just isn’t till June, once they face New Zealand at Lord’s, Root will keep on barring his personal resignation.
‘End of the road’
Former England captain Mike Atherton, nonetheless, was adamant his place as skipper was “untenable”.
“As was obvious to anyone who was present in Australia, and should have been obvious to anyone who wasn’t, Root has reached the end of the road as captain,” Atherton wrote in The Times.
Root, a batsman assured his place within the XI, was the apparent option to take over when Alastair Cook resigned as captain in 2017.
Unlike many an England skipper, he has maintained his kind, with Root topping the vacationers’ batting averages within the West Indies after a 2021 the place he scored 1,708 Test runs, the third highest tally in any calendar yr.
But longstanding doubts over whether or not he has the forceful persona and tactical abilities wanted for captaincy have solely intensified in current months.
Former skipper Nasser Hussain accused “world-class batsman” Root of lacking an “instinctive feel for the game as captain” and being get together to a “cop-out” following England’s controversial decision to leave James Anderson and Stuart Broad — their two all-time most successful Test bowlers — out of the squad for the Caribbean.
“They want to be a likeable team but you need more than that to win Tests,” Hussain wrote within the Daily Mail.
“Sometimes you want these powerful characters even when they’re troublesome to captain and coach.”
But if not Root, who should captain England?
Ben Stokes impressed when parachuted in as white-ball skipper at home to Pakistan last year following a Covid-19 outbreak.
Yet soon afterwards he took an extended leave of absence from the game to “prioritise his mental health” and England might be cautious of including to the returned all-rounder’s workload.
Broad, if solely within the quick time period, is an alternative choice, even whether it is 40 years since England final appointed a paceman, the late Bob Willis, as captain amid fears quicks lack objectivity about when to bowl themselves.
But quick bowler Pat Cummins’s success in main Australia to a sequence win in Pakistan after a house Ashes triumph might have altered English perceptions.
Yet whoever is captain can have a troublesome activity if England hold struggling the type of collapse that noticed them dismissed for 120 in Grenada to go away the West Indies requiring a mere 28 to win.
“I don’t see this Test match aspect all of the sudden turning into a staff that constantly wins sequence after sequence and that’s even in English circumstances,” former England captain Michael Vaughan told BT Sport.
But he too was withering in his assessment of Root’s captaincy after a match where his fellow Yorkshire batsman was “a long way short” tactically.
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