Captain’s brave decision to step down exacerbates an already worrying leadership vacuum in men’s cricketThere are seven weeks to go until the first Test against New Zealand at Lord’s and English cricket is without a permanent chair, a managing director of men’s cricket, a head coach, a selector and now a captain. Things may start to move quickly on the managing director front in the coming days, but it is still a remarkable leadership vacuum.Joe Root’s decision to step down on Good Friday was much like Alastair Cook’s five years ago; a race having been run and the eventual realisation that a fresh voice was required in the dressing room. Similarly, the news was broken via official channels despite both...
England’s skipper may be a fine batsman and a nice guy but his poor leadership has been exposed once again in the CaribbeanAfter the year England’s Test team have had, nine out of 10 captains would have resigned or been sacked. Joe Root survived, somehow, while several other heads rolled. After impressing Andrew Strauss with his appetite, he was given the chance to rebuild his own broken team. He banished Stuart Broad and Jimmy Anderson, the only top-class bowlers at his disposal. And in the first two Tests in West Indies, it looked as if it might just be working.Even a Root-o-sceptic had to admit that there were signs of progress. The fielding was sharper, the team spirit stronger, the...
Andrew Strauss reset England’s white-ball team successfully; now he should dismiss Chris Silverwood and find a new Test leaderSeven weeks ago, at the start of the Ashes, Joe Root made a strikingly clear statement. “Of course it will define my captaincy,” he said. “I’m not naive enough to think that it won’t.”He was right and there’s no wriggling out of it now. To lose one Ashes series 4-0 may be regarded as a misfortune, as long as the captain is inexperienced. To lose two that heavily, when you have been in charge for more Tests than any other England captain, looks like a reason to resign. Continue reading...
It is possible to arrest the decline in English Test cricket, starting with bringing those overseeing it to accountChris Silverwood is taking the positives. Chris Silverwood was expecting this. Chris Silverwood has found, squinting through his Victorian eyeglass, something to build on here.Watching Silverwood’s deeply weird performance in front of the cameras at the end of the third Ashes Test in Melbourne – batting away concerns, wincing in the sun, and wearing throughout the pitying smile of a man who knows that all of this is simply another stage in the vast, unknowable masterplan of Chris Silverwood – it was hard not to worry a little about England’s head coach; to search in vain for the line between nightmarishly bad...
All-rounder’s numbers are not too special but he has curtailed England by twice removing their talisman in these AshesDecades from now, when some awkward teenager in a biosecure bunker tries to forget about the grimness of the dying planet outside by scrolling through old cricket statistics on their settlement’s offline intranet, they will think that Joe Root in 2021 must have been kissed on the nose by a sunbeam. Not only did he get to spend time outdoors, above ground, with no concern for atmospheric chlorine or flying sharks, but he made runs wherever he went, against all-comers, racing up the record list like a 12-legged scorpion up a respirator pipe.For his final stanza, the tour of Australia, his numbers...