England have won just one of their last 17 Test matches and have now gone five Test series without a win; Joe Root insisted that he wanted to continue as Test captain after the latest loss against the West Indies.
Following England’s latest series defeat in the West Indies, Nasser Hussain discusses Joe Root’s future as Test captain, why Ben Stokes could be a potential replacement and what England must do to climb out of the bottom of the test classification.
Root has been an outstanding ambassador for the game, as a player, as a human being, and as a captain. He has been brilliant. He couldn’t ask for more in terms of leading the team off the field, with the way he carries himself.
We should be very proud of Root but the main job as England captain, as I know and as anyone who has captained the team knows, is to win games of cricket and I am afraid those victories have run out.
His record tells you he is the most successful as he has won more games than anyone as captain but I think it is a Test they have won in the last 17 and that is just untenable and the onus will stop on the captain.
It’s not Root’s fault they’re consistently 50-5, but some bad decisions have been made off the field. In Ahmedabad, where four closers played and one spun from the ball. In Brisbane, batting first in a green top and shutting out both Stuart Broad and James Anderson. In Adelaide, he didn’t play roulette when he was spinning square. Then he didn’t take Broad and Anderson to the Caribbean, the two best bowlers ever to play for England.
There have been mistakes that have been made. As a captain you have to accept that and personally I think it’s time to move on. I don’t think I’ve done an impressive job, but I think it’s time to make a change.
There are so many times that you can make the same speech saying that we are getting better and trying to convince your team that you are. He just needs to hear a different voice as captain and a different energy to bring that side forward. I think the time has probably come at this stage after the West Indies.
I think that was the case with me or Michael Atherton or Michael Vaughan or Sir Andrew Strauss or a few other England captains, that the work got to his batting, but if anything, it probably made Root a better player.
Root’s stats over the last two years have been phenomenal and he would be the best final year Test player in the world of cricket, so I don’t think the captaincy has affected his batting in a negative way.
He may well continue into the summer. We don’t know who is going to come in as head coach, director of cricket, there are so many decisions to be made. English cricket at the top is in a state of flux and confusion, so who knows who will captain the next Test match.
It’s the best job in English cricket, for me, being the England captain, and I admire the fact that he wants to continue doing it. The easiest thing would be to say ‘I’m going to go away, I’m going to focus on hitting and I’m going to focus on becoming the best batsman to ever play for England’, which he’ll probably end up doing.
I quite admire the resilience in him that he wants to keep doing the work. I don’t think the reason for not changing is that there is no one else. It is the best job in English cricket and the most important job, but I don’t think that is the reason to continue as captain. There is always someone else who can come in and do that job.
The obvious one for me is Ben Stokes. Stokes has a fabulous cricket brain, just look at his innings in the World Cup final and his innings at Headingley against Australia.
On the rare occasions he has captained, like the rare one in Australia when Root was off the pitch, some of the changes he made have been noticeable. He has a fantastic cricketing brain and I think he is a great presence in that dressing room. When he speaks, people turn around and a lot of people in the locker room look up and admire him.
The only thing with Ben is that I don’t know where he is off the field right now. To do the best job he needs to be in a really good space away from cricket.
He’s obviously had his problems, he’s struggled, he’s been in a tough spot, but he seems to be enjoying his cricket again. Whoever’s a director of cricket, get in his car, take the A1 and sit down and have coffee with Ben Stokes, then find out what he’s like off the pitch rather than just on it.
Sometimes it’s a job and then it all falls into place, but I don’t think you can decide on the captain until you’ve decided on the director of cricket, because the director of cricket has to decide on the coach. You can’t get the director of cricket to decide on the captain, as the new manager might come in and want someone different. There are so many gaps to fill right now.
My preference would be to select the director of cricket, who then decides who will be the manager, and then they will sit down together to decide who will be the captain. The director of cricket and the coach might decide they want Joe Root, which is fine, but get things ready for the first test match of the summer because our test cricket match has been lousy.
In the last couple of years, we’ve had four players who could possibly make it into our best Test XI. We have had Anderson, Broad, Root and Stokes but with those four cricketers we are sitting at the bottom of the World Test Championship.
A long time ago, when I took over as captain and we were the last in the world, Duncan Fletcher turned to me at Lord’s and said “you’re not the best team in the world, but you shouldn’t be the worst” and that’s exactly what This England team needs a kind of wake-up call.
They shouldn’t be the worst team in the world, but right now that’s exactly what they are.
