‘We’ve got to be clever about how we do things’ – Joe Root
Joe Root has now been England Test captain in 15 matches. Of those, they have lost eight and won five games – the wins came against South Africa and the Windies at home around the middle of 2017. Since then, England have lost 4-0 in Australia, 1-0 in New Zealand, and are now 1-0 down at home in the two-Test series against Pakistan.
“It’s been disappointing, we have been outplayed across all three departments,” said Root on Sunday 27 May after Pakistan won the first Test at Lord’s by nine wickets inside four days.
“In particular, [we're] disappointed with the bat first up. We were always chasing the game from there, really, trying to find a way back in,” he added of England’s successive batting collapses.
After opting to bat, England were shot out for 184 the first time, and were in sight of another poor total in the second innings at 110/6 before Jos Buttler (67) and Dominic Bess (57) added 126 for the seventh wicket to take England to 242 and force Pakistan to bat again. But, chasing 64, Pakistan needed just 12.4 overs to seal victory.
“We have to be better. We dropped chances; I thought the bowlers created a number of opportunities. We showed a bit of character last night, the way Jos played, and Bessie in particular, stood up and put in a real good effort. But ultimately, we’ve just got to be better,” pointed out Root.
Following the series defeats in Australia and New Zealand, there was talk of the team needing to take a fresh look at the way they played Test cricket, and Root said that the team had done what they could to set things right.
“We have looked at things, we had a really good chat about how we wanted to go about this summer, the way we approach training, and I think we went about things the right way,” he said. “We’ve got to give it time to work. We worked a lot harder, the intensity in practice was definitely better, the guys were working out things which were relevant for this game but also looking at improving long-term. That’s going to make us a better team. But it doesn’t happen overnight. We have to give it a chance to work.
“It’s easy to say we need to make drastic changes. We have been outperformed, and we have to look at that seriously as a group, we have to look at that as captain, coach and selection panel, but ultimately it was not one or two guys. We collectively were under-par this week and we have to take that on the chin and learn the lessons very quickly and make sure we respond well.”
Despite the gloom, Root held out hope for better things, saying that there is a way up for the team – currently No.5 in the MRF Tyres ICC Test Team Rankings – if they execute their plans better.
“We know we are underperforming and that is very difficult to take,” said Root. “We have a very talented group of players and we fully believe we can get to where we want to be. It would be very easy going into next week feeling sorry for ourselves and thinking that there is no way forward, but there absolutely is.
“It’s a great opportunity to get a good result and move forward for the rest of the summer. We’ve got to turn things around, we’ve got to be clever about how we do things. We’ve got to be smarter in certain situations.”
The second and final Test starts on 1 June in Headingley.