Joe Root is to be the new captain of the England Test team. The England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) has appointed him just over a month after Ben Stokes announced his retirement midway through a Test match, and almost three weeks before England next take the field against Pakistan at Headingley on 19 August.
There are, to put it mildly, very good reasons to doubt the wisdom of this appointment. One is that we’ve tried this before and it didn’t work
There are, to put it mildly, very good reasons to doubt the wisdom of this appointment. One is that we’ve tried this before and it didn’t work. Root was captain from 2017 until 2022 and early on in his tenure it became obvious that he was ill-suited to the job. Nevertheless, he was kept on for years.
With Root in charge, we lost two Ashes series and failed to regain the urn in a third, as well as losing three series against New Zealand and two away series against the West Indies. Root’s batting suffered too: his Test average was markedly lower as captain than it has been since, and he admitted that he had developed ‘a very unhealthy relationship’ with the job and that it had ‘started to take a bad toll on my own personal health’. Yet none of that mattered. We were repeatedly told that there was no alternative. In truth, the suits simply could not bring themselves to admit that they had appointed the wrong man.
Then he was brought back in June this year to captain the side for one Test after Ben Stokes was stood down pending an ECB investigation into a possible breach of the team’s midnight curfew. It was just like the bad old days: led by Root, England lost by 253 runs. Sir Geoffrey Boycott wrote that Root appeared to have learnt ‘nothing’ about the art of captaincy and described his handling of fast bowler Jofra Archer as ‘madness’. In 2019, when Root previously captained Archer in a Test against New Zealand, he made him bowl 42 draining overs on a lifeless pitch – a decision later widely criticised as an example of England’s mishandling of Archer’s workload.
Why, then, has the ECB gone back to Root? Partly because Harry Brook, the vice-captain, plainly isn’t ready. It’s true that he’s enjoyed some success as England’s white-ball captain, but Test cricket is another discipline altogether. In his most recent Test innings, when the situation demanded judgement and patience, Brook batted as though he was in a T20, scoring 21 from just nine deliveries before giving his wicket away. What if he captained in the same careless spirit?
There are questions, too, about Brook’s maturity: in New Zealand last October he clashed with a nightclub bouncer just hours before captaining England in a one-day international. And anyway, it would be asking too much to expect one man to captain in all formats.
But Root and Brook are not the only two cricketers in England. If neither is suitable, why not look elsewhere? The deeper problem is that the ECB’s imagination rarely extends beyond the leading batsmen already established in the side. Yet some of cricket’s most distinguished captains, Gary Sobers, Imran Khan, Brian Close and Ray Illingworth among them, have been all-rounders—perhaps because they understand and handle their bowlers better. Why not try Sam Curran, a seam-bowling all-rounder and something of a like-for-like replacement for Stokes? Or Ollie Robinson, an excellent Test bowler who has been captaining Sussex? Or one of several experienced county captains?
The ECB has nevertheless returned to Root. The urgent question is whether it will work out any better this time. Root said that it was ‘a great honour and privilege’ to be asked to captain England again and that the prospect of working alongside Stephen Fleming was a ‘huge motivator’. Fleming has been appointed the new head coach, although Marcus Trescothick will take charge for the Pakistan series before Fleming assumes the role. But those three matches should tell us by mid-September whether the ECB’s confidence in Root is justified.
The calendar is unforgiving. If Root fails the Pakistan test, someone else must lead the side in South Africa this winter and against Australia next summer. The ECB must not cling to a failing project merely to save face.
Recent history suggests that, when it comes to the Test captaincy, the ECB makes two mistakes: it rarely looks beyond a tiny circle of senior batsmen and then it clings to its chosen man for far too long. By returning to Root, it has already made the first error. If his re-appointment doesn’t work out, it must not compound that with the second – or the cost is likely to be yet another Ashes debacle.
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