Photograph: Philip Brown/Getty Images
Joe Root has warned that England’s series-levelling win against Pakistan must not “paper over the cracks” despite expressing some personal satisfaction that his players delivered on their orders to show more pride and passion.
The three-day innings victory at Headingley stopped what had become a worrying rot for Root’s side, who had gone winless over the course of their Antipodean winter and then hurtled into a full-blown crisis with the crushing defeat at Lord’s last week.
Questions were asked of their head coach, Trevor Bayliss, while the former captain Michael Vaughan set the hare running on a war of words with Stuart Broad after suggesting either he or Jimmy Anderson should miss out in Leeds to “ruffle a few feathers” among the squad.
Speaking after Broad had fittingly taken the final wicket to cap a fine individual performance, Root said: “I asked the guys to play with pride and passion and you saw that on the field. I think there is an element of that that comes out through criticism.
“To play for such a long time at this level like our senior guys have, you need to have that. They need to make sure they harness everything that they did leading into this game. It’s very important we don’t paper over the cracks and think this is going to be us [fixed] for ever – we have to make sure we don’t find ourselves in those positions like last week.”
While Vaughan’s theory was always unlikely to come to pass, defeat here would have seen England tumble to No 7 in the world Test rankings and certainly increased the pressure on Bayliss given Ed Smith has just begun his selection role and Root is only a year into captaincy.
“Trevor is the easy target when the side is losing,” Root said. “It would have been very easy for the whole group to get tense and have a negative feel but Trevor’s experience pulled us through. You saw it on the field, the energy the guys had. The confidence after that great start was there all week and that is a big thing for the team moving forward.”
The chief positives to emerge from the 1-1 series draw came from the two standout selections at the start. Jos Buttler’s two half-centuries validated his return, while Dom Bess followed a maiden half-century on debut at Lord’s with 49 from nightwatchman here and then claimed his first three Test wickets as Pakistan crumbled on Sunday.
Root said: “The one thing we knew we were going to get from Dom was that character. He was padded up for 45 minutes, desperate to get in as nightwatchman, because he wanted to be involved in the game. He wants to bowl, he wants the ball in the field – that’s the sort of player he is. It’s no surprise to me that you get the results you’ve seen this week from him.”
England’s thoughts now turn to their strongest format – one-day cricket – before the Test series against India in August, with a one-off match against Scotland in Edinburgh on Sunday followed by a five-game series with a somewhat callow looking Australia side. Ben Stokes, who missed out in Leeds with a hamstring tear, is confirmed to sit out the weekend fixture and the “first part” of the Australia series that starts on 13 June. Dawid Malan comes into the squad for the former, while Sam Billings has been added for the latter.
Pakistan can reflect on two Test wins from three on their tour of Ireland and England, having beaten the Irish in Malahide ahead of this drawn series, and some fine performances from Mohammad Abbas – the man of the series – and the teenage all-rounder Shadab Khan.
Safraz Ahmed, Pakistan’s captain, said: “When we came here people thought that we will not win one game. The way we played at Lord’s was perfect, the batting, the bowling the fielding. It’s disappointing that we had a chance to win the series but we didn’t play well here. I am still proud of my young team.”
https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2018/jun/03/joe-root-england-pakistan-headingley
