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[PICTURES/VIDEOS] Joe Root - following his career trajectory

Robert said:
The other three have at least one competent opener going in ahead of them. Root is continually doing repair jobs because his top two are not test class.

But the England captaincy is a curse, drastically reducing the run output of Vaughan and to a smaller extent everyone since. They should give it to someone else to free Root up to resume hitting centuries.
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That's a fair point. But we've also seen situations when those three have carried their teams almost single-handedly. Less so with Root.

As for the captaincy question, I don't see any other option. You could make Stokes captain, who is VC at the moment but then he has the risk of going the Botham route when he was handed captaincy and I don't think an out of form Stokes is something England can afford. Bairstow is not a suitable candidate by any stretch and Butler just got back into the test side. None of the other players are established enough to be captain. It has to be Root and I think if he wants to be counted among the best that ever played for England, he has to stand-up and start performing as captain. When you're as talented a player as Root you have to find a way.
 
Robert said:
The other three have at least one competent opener going in ahead of them. Root is continually doing repair jobs because his top two are not test class.
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I would disagree with this. Kohli in the last 3 years has not had the openers doing a good job, especially overseas. Last year almost all of big his runs came with India in trouble after losing early wickets.

Root'a problem isn't that he comes in early, he's actually good at getting on against good bowling and doing a repair job. But he hardly ever takes his team to a position of true strength after seeing off the difficult opening spells. It is a mental issue and I doubt it will ever be solved.

If you also look at his scores, unlike Smith, kw and kohli, he almost never gets ugly or gritty hundreds. His good scores are almost always without exception free flowing fluent knocks. When the other 3 have scratchy starts or survive dropped catches etc, they take advantage and ensure they don't let that chance go begging. The ability to get these ugly runs is what separates the good from the great and root doesn't have it.
 
Is he still in his 57-and-out routine?
 
Cuts_and_cuts_hard said:
I would disagree with this. Kohli in the last 3 years has not had the openers doing a good job, especially overseas. Last year almost all of big his runs came with India in trouble after losing early wickets.

Root'a problem isn't that he comes in early, he's actually good at getting on against good bowling and doing a repair job. But he hardly ever takes his team to a position of true strength after seeing off the difficult opening spells. It is a mental issue and I doubt it will ever be solved.

If you also look at his scores, unlike Smith, kw and kohli, he almost never gets ugly or gritty hundreds. His good scores are almost always without exception free flowing fluent knocks. When the other 3 have scratchy starts or survive dropped catches etc, they take advantage and ensure they don't let that chance go begging. The ability to get these ugly runs is what separates the good from the great and root doesn't have it.
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These are two separate issues.

Root knows how to hit centuries instead of fifties - he has done it sixteen times already. If he knew how then, he can remember.

If he is averaging 49 in tests despite not being able to score when out of form, that is good enough for me.

It’s the captaincy that is messing him up as it does to most England captains. They have too much to do compared to other countries’ skippers. Just watch as he gets that thousand yard stare poor Strauss had at the end of his tenure.
 
and again... Root is serious depreciating ... he is being sheltered by Bairstow/Roy/Morgan/Stokes/Butler in the LOI format.. fully exposed in the tests.... he is for most def out of the fab 4.... its fab3 for now ...
 
Analysis on TV showing that he's standing further across his stumps than he was in Ashes 2015, making him more susceptible to LBW. Trying to imitate Steve Smith but failing it seems...
 
Joe root's last 7 series averages:

35.5
39
35.4
38
29.5
16.5 (only 1 match)
24.75 (so far in 2 matches)

This is very very alarming. He might not even end up averaging 45. He only averages 48.3 now and it is plummeting with every match.
 
Rellu_Katta said:
and again... Root is serious depreciating ... he is being sheltered by Bairstow/Roy/Morgan/Stokes/Butler in the LOI format.. fully exposed in the tests.... he is for most def out of the fab 4.... its fab3 for now ...
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What as, a man with sixteen test centuries?

He is batting too high, and should not be captain. Fix that, and the runs will flow off his bat again.
 
Robert said:
What as, a man with sixteen test centuries?

He is batting too high, and should not be captain. Fix that, and the runs will flow off his bat again.
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Seems to be English specific excuses. Tell that to the likes of Kane Williamson.
 
Varun said:
Seems to be English specific excuses. Tell that to the likes of Kane Williamson.
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Tell that to any of the top three batsmen: Kohli, Smith and Williamson. All of their averages went up when they became captain. He does not have the mental makeup of greats.
 
The worrying sign for england is not only that he is out of form but has developed a deep technical flaw. He has been found out and might need to significantly alter his technique to save his pads from an inswinger. Though signs are not good, but still one cannot rule out the possibility of root making a grand comeback by getting a big hundred.
 
Chief Destroyer said:
Tell that to any of the top three batsmen: Kohli, Smith and Williamson. All of their averages went up when they became captain. He does not have the mental makeup of greats.
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Not only that, I would say all of them have very poor top order support when batting in overseas conditions. Pujara before the australia series was a failure overseas, Australia and NZ top order are weak as well. Yet it has not prevented those 3 from scoring runs. Root is simply not as good.
 
Joe Root is an elite test batsmen but a level below Smith and Kohli and in same league as Kane Williamson IMO.

He has match winning hundred in South Africa and Sri Lanka and averages a brilliant 48 in tests. One has to remember he plays more tests than anyone else, so needs to be given a bit leverage. Smith and Kohli are a level superior and while Kane did stole the show in WC'19 but Root hasnt been that far off from KW in either of the formats.
 
out 2nd ball duck...

Root has completely lost it when it comes to the mental aspect of the game.

they should remove him from captaincy as soon as possible
 
He has struggled since Ashes 2017.

His averages in each series since then reads:-

47
35
39
35
38
29
16
24
 
Fighting it out - kudos to him for making that effort. Could end up with a hundred if he survives next hour or so
 
Root is gutsing it out but his performance has dipped alarmingly (41 as captain vs 52 as not). He has also not averaged over 40 in his last three years. His captaincy has also been rubbish (bowling Archer into the ground, then doing the same with Stokes). It is clear he needs to step away from it and probably give it to someone else but I am not sure who can do it. Broad, Anderson are at the end of their careers. Bairstow, Buttler are not performing very well either. Rest are all very new. Woakes? But I am not sure whether he has ever captained his domestic side.
 
Ugh, I was really hoping he'd go on to triple figures.

Instead Warne gave him the commentator's kiss of death - "Three or four maidens will force him to do something silly...maidens lead to a wicket 80 percent of the time." - and sure enough, Root tries to relieve some pressure, tries to attack who he deems a lesser bowler, and quickly falls.
 
This 77 was Root’s best Test innings in a while. Should have gone on to a hundred ideally, but he laid a vital platform - and in doing so he looked solid, assured and confident throughout his knock, which nowadays we don’t see often from him.
 
I've often watched and listened to former players and experts explain how bad form in one aspect of the game can also affect other aspects of the game. For example, Root's bad batting form might be affected by his captaincy, as his team didn't win those first two tests of a very pressurised Ashes series with him as captain. This lack of confidence in captaincy and batting may then have been made worse by a very bad drop at slip which he did, which would've decreased his confidence even more, and he's suddenly feeling very down about all aspects of his cricket.

But this past Test, with a good 77 that laid the platform for an English victory and the fact that they managed to win the test match in such dramatic fashion from a very unlikely position, it would make him be feeling much better about himself, that he now has a victory in this series under his captaincy and his batting performance was quite decent. I think this all contributes to form and confidence, and we may see much improved and confident batting performances by Root in the last two tests.
 
He deserves credit for that 77. He showed a lot of character and set the game up.

Needs to bat like this more consistently.
 
I completely disagree, bar stokes heroics England were down and out even the skipper himself admitted this
 
Sir-fraz said:
Innings only means something because stokes played a monster of an innings.
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Exactly, stokes extra ordinary innings saved the biscuit for the other bats, example had stokes got out and England were hammered, the questions could easily be root gets in makes a 50 and gets out again therefore wasnt good enough to make daddy hundred to set the game up to win
 
Manunited18 said:
Exactly, stokes extra ordinary innings saved the biscuit for the other bats, example had stokes got out and England were hammered, the questions could easily be root gets in makes a 50 and gets out again therefore wasnt good enough to make daddy hundred to set the game up to win
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Yep. Root shouldve stayed till the end. Instead he went for a hoick and got out. Especially when the new ball was due soon.

Hes just not mentally as strong as the rest of the fab 4.
And its obvious. Captaincy has dented his batting, on top of that hes not even a good captain.
 
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Red-ball cricket might be England Test skipper Joe Root's main focus, but he is not giving up on his T20I ambitions.

England had a long and busy home summer with back-to-back long assignments, first with the ICC Men's Cricket World Cup 2019, where they triumphed after a thrilling win in the final at Lord's, followed by the Ashes series against Australia that ended in a 2-2 draw.

Their next international assignment is against their World Cup final opponents New Zealand in their backyard, where both the teams will first play five Twenty20 Internationals with the first one due to be played on 1 November, before they head into the final leg of the tour – two Tests at Bay Oval and Seddon Park.

England have rested some of their star players – Root, Jofra Archer, Ben Stokes Jonny Bairstow, and Jos Buttler – for the T20I series, giving way to budding stars Tom Banton and Saqib Mahmood.

Root sees Banton as his competition, although in a healthy way, in the T20I set-up and added that he would have to "keep getting better" to not "get swept away and eaten up" by a newcomer.

"For me to get in to the T20I side, it will mean that I have to keep getting better," said the Test skipper. "If someone like Tom Banton comes in and sets the world alight, I've got to try force him out in the limited opportunities I get to play. If that happens, it raises the standard of English cricket in that format. That's the food chain that cricket is sometimes. You have to be at the top of it otherwise you get swept away and eaten up."

Root has made 32 T20I appearances for England, scoring 893 runs at an average of 35.72. He was England's top run-getter in the 2016 ICC Men's World T20, finishing the tournament with 249 runs from six games at 49.80, including a match-winning 44-ball 83 in a remarkable run-chase against South Africa in the Super 10 fixture and later, a 36-ball 54 in the final against West Indies which England lost by four wickets.

Root added that it's just a matter of getting into the groove with the switch in formats, as he reminisced his 2016 heroics.

"I obviously scored runs in the 2016 final and I've always felt that when I have had a block of that format, to really get stuck into it, I've generally done pretty well," Root said. "I felt that was the case with the last T20 World Cup. It took me a couple of warm-up games over a two-week period beforehand to really get back into it.

"But then once the tournament started, I found my way in, and felt like it was very similar to the one-day team where I knew how everyone else was going to play. Then you dovetail around them. I've got good experiences to call upon. I know what it's like to have to perform in those scenarios."

https://www.icc-cricket.com/news/1463378
 
Sir-fraz said:
Yep. Root shouldve stayed till the end. Instead he went for a hoick and got out. Especially when the new ball was due soon.

Hes just not mentally as strong as the rest of the fab 4.
And its obvious. Captaincy has dented his batting, on top of that hes not even a good captain.
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What is “mentally strong”? Do you mean ability to concentrate for long periods?

I bet if the other three were England captain their performances would degrade. Almost everyone’s does.
 
Robert said:
What is “mentally strong”? Do you mean ability to concentrate for long periods?

I bet if the other three were England captain their performances would degrade. Almost everyone’s does.
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Mentally strong in this case means handling pressure. Root obviously isn't able to take the pressure of captaincy. Kohli, Smith and Williamson have raised they're games after becoming captain. Although Smith wasn't a good captain, his batting went to the next level.
 
Danyaalr01 said:
Mentally strong in this case means handling pressure. Root obviously isn't able to take the pressure of captaincy. Kohli, Smith and Williamson have raised they're games after becoming captain. Although Smith wasn't a good captain, his batting went to the next level.
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There is something unique about captaining England which takes batters out of the Zone. Nearly all of them become less effective. The only exception was Gooch. Botham’s form with bat and ball disintegrated. Gatting became hit-and-miss. Vaughan suffered a precipitous loss of run-production. Strauss, Cook and now Root lost form.

It must be mentally exhausting to be England skipper.
 
Robert said:
There is something unique about captaining England which takes batters out of the Zone. Nearly all of them become less effective. The only exception was Gooch. Botham’s form with bat and ball disintegrated. Gatting became hit-and-miss. Vaughan suffered a precipitous loss of run-production. Strauss, Cook and now Root lost form.

It must be mentally exhausting to be England skipper.
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You keep repeating about this unique pressure on being captain of English team ... What is so different about captaining an English team ?
 
bantu said:
You keep repeating about this unique pressure on being captain of English team ... What is so different about captaining an English team ?
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It's Asian teams that are the most difficult to captain, especially Pakistan due to all the politics and ex cricketers, plus lack of discipline from some players.
 
bantu said:
You keep repeating about this unique pressure on being captain of English team ... What is so different about captaining an English team ?
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I honestly don’t know. But nearly all the skippers lose form, so it must be a poisoned chalice.
 
Having said that, Root is not a good tactician and should lose the armband to get his run-power back. There is no obvious replacement, though. They won’t want to kill the golden goose Stokes by making him skipper - remember what it did to Botham and Flintoff - and while Buttler could do it, they have made him senior keeper which messed up even the mighty Stewart’s captaincy too.
 
There's no fab 4 anymore. Smith and Root have deviated to opposite directions from the other 2. The only competition is between Virat and Kane for a distant 2nd place.
 
I think we have enough evidence to conclude that no English batsman can become a great.

None of their top-10 all-time test run scorers even average 50. Ridiculous.
 
The one thing he has on his side is that he is younger than smith-kw-kohli. But he needs to go on an absolute tear now to go down as an atg. Otherwise he may drop even below amla-pietersen level
 
Abdullah719 said:
His average as captain has dropped to 39.7, first time it's gone below 40.
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D7vMpvv.png
 
Varun said:
I think we have enough evidence to conclude that no English batsman can become a great.

None of their top-10 all-time test run scorers even average 50. Ridiculous.
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The reason is that they do not have ridiculously good home averages. Cook averages 44 at home , root 52 , pitersen 52. The other 50 plus batsmen usually have amazing home averages.
 
Lara was averaging 47 at one point but that Srilanka series turned him into beast,Joe needs 1 series to dominate and to make a name for himself.
 
andy0204 said:
Lara was averaging 47 at one point but that Srilanka series turned him into beast,Joe needs 1 series to dominate and to make a name for himself.
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You do realize Lara scored 12 double and 2 triple tons right? Root can barely score centuries. Root is on the level of Laxman, decent test batsmen but nowhere near ATG.
 
JibranAnsari said:
The reason is that they do not have ridiculously good home averages. Cook averages 44 at home , root 52 , pitersen 52. The other 50 plus batsmen usually have amazing home averages.
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They don't have great away averages either.
 
Joseph Gomes said:
You do realize Lara scored 12 double and 2 triple tons right? Root can barely score centuries. Root is on the level of Laxman, decent test batsmen but nowhere near ATG.
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I am not telling that he is Atg.
He needs 1 series to dominate and to regain his form,for that he needs to resign from the captaincy.
 
Captaincy burden is ruining him. ECB should act before it is too late.
 
Enough evidences are there which illustrates that Root is not really at the level of great test batters. It's high time Root steps down as test captain,not just for his own profit but also for his team's profit.

England will have to wait more to produce a 50+ averaging batsmen, although for now what they have managed is that they have finally produced an ATG since Ian Botham, which is Ben Stokes.
 
Stokes should be handed the test captaincy, he looks to be better at handling pressure and might even be better at being pro active regarding tactics too.
 
Titan24 said:
Stokes should be handed the test captaincy, he looks to be better at handling pressure and might even be better at being pro active regarding tactics too.
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Way too controversial, captains are not just decision makers but leaders as well, Stokes is an unreliable character who's not stable enough to be a captain of test team. A team should not have to rely on just captain to be good, look at Australia they're doing pretty well with Tim Paine who's extremely mediocre.
 
Stokes shouldn't be the captain and honestly there isn't enough options left. Buttler has to cement his place first.

Captaincy is not everyone's cup of tea. I don't think he is prepared for test captaincy right now. There is a lot more that takes to be a good captain. Broad is probably the only option but not sure if that will come good as well. He is on his last legs and is a hit and miss. There is nothing inevitable which is why ECB are not willing to take any major decision.
 
Ab Fan said:
Stokes shouldn't be the captain and honestly there isn't enough options left. Buttler has to cement his place first.

Captaincy is not everyone's cup of tea. I don't think he is prepared for test captaincy right now. There is a lot more that takes to be a good captain. Broad is probably the only option but not sure if that will come good as well. He is on his last legs and is a hit and miss. There is nothing inevitable which is why ECB are not willing to take any major decision.
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If not bring Morgan and make him as a captain.
Just like Cricket Australia are doing with Tim Paine.
 
Joseph Gomes said:
Way too controversial, captains are not just decision makers but leaders as well, Stokes is an unreliable character who's not stable enough to be a captain of test team. A team should not have to rely on just captain to be good, look at Australia they're doing pretty well with Tim Paine who's extremely mediocre.
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Other than him I cant think of anybody unless Eng wants to go with bowling captain in Broad. Root's form has clearly been effected and Eng havent been doing too well in tests so unless he turns it around big time someone else will have to be appointed captain and there arent many names.
 
Joseph Gomes said:
You do realize Lara scored 12 double and 2 triple tons right? Root can barely score centuries. Root is on the level of Laxman, decent test batsmen but nowhere near ATG.
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Lara scored 9 double hundreds, not 12.
 
Ab Fan said:
Enough evidences are there which illustrates that Root is not really at the level of great test batters. It's high time Root steps down as test captain,not just for his own profit but also for his team's profit.

England will have to wait more to produce a 50+ averaging batsmen, although for now what they have managed is that they have finally produced an ATG since Ian Botham, which is Ben Stokes.
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Stokes is as good as Botham the batter and catcher, but nowhere near as good with the ball.

Anyway the captaincy ruined the form of Botham and Flintoff so I doubt England will go down that route. Burns might be a better bet. Then Root can start hitting centuries again.
 
Robert said:
Stokes is as good as Botham the batter and catcher, but nowhere near as good with the ball.

Anyway the captaincy ruined the form of Botham and Flintoff so I doubt England will go down that route. Burns might be a better bet. Then Root can start hitting centuries again.
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Yes but Botham is not only an ATG but one of the best ever. A legend of the game and truly great all-rounder.

You don't have to be as good as Botham to be ATG. I think for the modern era taking the value of World Cup and test performances, he has been better than any England player in last 25-30 years and the closest anyone gets to ATG for England.
 
Root is a very, very good Test batsman but no where near the likes of Kohli, Williamson or Smith.

He lacks that 'clutch' factor, which Stokes has. Now there's a great player.
 
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I think Root would be better without the captaincy. Never rated him as a great skipper.
 
Burns has experience captaining Surrey and it might be worth it as England openers don't score much anyway. Getting a firing Root would be more important for England.
 
Back with a brilliant hundred so far!
He is class and will score plenty of runs and hundreds.
 
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