Joe Root has promised to not rip up England’s Bazball playbook during his second stint as Test captain.
The 35-year-old champion batter is officially back in the top job following the retirement of Ben Stokes with Root to form a new partnership with freshly appointed red ball coach Stephen Fleming.
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The former New Zealand skipper, who replaces old teammate Brendon McCullum, will not yet be at the helm when England host Pakistan in a three-Test series beginning at Root’s home ground Headingley on August 19, but will be in charge for the tour of South Africa in December.
Root will tag team with interim coach Marcus Trescothick, who is England’s batting coach, against Pakistan.
The Yorkshireman expects there to be little change to his team’s cavalier approach with the bat, saying he does not want to “completely rip everything up” from the Bazball era in an interview with Sky Sports while playing for Welsh Fire in The Hundred.
“Since 2022 we’ve done some amazing things,” Root told ECB media in his first interview since being reappointed England captain.
“We’ll try to continue a lot of the good stuff we did over that period and not finding ourselves back to where we were before Baz [Brendon McCullum] and Ben [Stokes] took over, and evolving and tweaking things to where we want to be and really competing against the top nations consistently.”
Root has led England a record 65 times at Test level, but captaincy has not always sat well with the prolific run scorer, who is 1,807 runs shy of all-time Test leading run scorer Sachin Tendulkar.
Root stepped in for Stokes at The Oval earlier this summer when the now retired all-rounder missed the second Test against New Zealand in the aftermath of he and Gus Atkinson’s nightclub incident.
A crushing 253 run defeat to the Black Caps issued reminders of why Root gave up the job in the first place back in 2022.
England won just one of his last 17 matches as permanent captain, including a 4-0 Ashes loss in Australia.
While Root’s batting average as captain, 46.70, is below his career average of 53.34 when playing without the added responsibility.
They are numbers that have caused great concerns around the cricket world.
“That surprised me a little bit,” Australian legend Adam Gilchrist told foxsports.com.au.
“A bit surprised that Joe would feel inclined to go back into the captain’s position given the way it all finished for him as captain and what he’s been able to do since then.
“Maybe they didn’t feel they had a ready made candidate at this point in time. So, good on him for taking it on for his country.”
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Root believes he is better equipped for the challenge now, having scored 4,225 runs in the four years since relinquishing the captaincy to charge towards Tendulkar’s record.
“[I’m] hugely different, anyone that says in an eight-year period they were the same person they were [at the start] is probably lying,” he said.
“Whether it be within the game, away from it, all the experience you have along the way throughout that period you will be shaped into a slightly different person. I think that will be very similar in how I want to take this team forward.”
Meanwhile, England’s managing director Rob Key admitted in an interview with the BBC on Friday that Gilchrist’s suggestion was right.
“All of this happened a little bit too soon, probably,” he replied when asked about the lack of captaincy candidates within the England Test team.
Harry Brook was Stokes’ vice-captain and is in charge of the white-ball teams, but the 27-year-old was passed over for the Test job off the back of a nightclub fight with a bouncer in Wellington last year.
There were also concerns about his ability to juggle leading all three formats – something Root never had to deal with as Eoin Morgan and Jos Buttler took charge in the shorter formats.
Key was also asked about Zak Crawley and Ollie Pope, who were discarded after and during the 4-1 Ashes defeat in Australia.
The pair of 28-year-olds have played 64 Tests each with former vice-captain Pope even leading England on five occasions in Stokes’ absence.
But ultimately, England were unable to yield a return on their investments as their struggles down under eventually led to the pair being dropped after years of middling performances – Crawley averages 31.18, while Pope averages 34.55.
“The shame is their form got in the way of them being able to stay in the side,” Key said.
“Then that void wouldn’t have been there as much. I think we would have had two outstanding leaders … We’ve got leaders, they’re just in the white-ball set up at the moment.”
As for their verdicts on Fleming, Root said the five-time winner of the IPL with the Chennai Super Kings’ appointment was one of the key motivators behind donning the captain’s blazer once again.
“We’ve spoken briefly and if I’m being brutally honest he was a big reason why I wanted to do it,” Root said.
“I’m very excited by the way he sees the game, where he sees us sit as a team and the work we have to do to get to where we want to get to.
“All of that got me very excited about taking this role on. Very much looking forward to working with him and he’s obviously got a wealth of experience, done some amazing things in the game as a player and as a coach.
“I’m looking forward to the next little while and us trying to build something pretty special together.”
Gilchrist shared Root’s sentiments towards Fleming in what could be a warning sign to Australia before next year’s Ashes in England.
“I’ve got the utmost respect for him. He’s a quality person, a fine thinker of the game and an outstanding tactician as a captain,” Gilchrist told foxsports.com.au.
“Just a really sensible, matter of fact guy. I don’t think there’s really too much outrageous creativity, but through deep thought he does have a creative component there.
“I guess the fact all his coaching has been all around T20 (could be a challenge), but that doesn’t mean it can’t be transferred.
“It’s about man management and he has over 100 Test matches of his own playing experience to know the landscape of Test match cricket.”
Fleming will work alongside his former teammate and business partner McCullum, who remains England’s white-ball coach.
Key said the focus for Fleming will be to get back to “basics”.
“A lot of it’s about, can we bring someone in who can get this team to do the basics bloody well? It probably didn’t need to take four years to realise such a person might be useful,” Key said.
“You try and set things up so that you have the best chance of success – but not only success, to sustain success,” Key added.
“That’s what English cricket’s got to do. We have moments where we win series. Australia has success and repeats it. That’s what we need to do. We can’t just have … a brilliant two or three years. We need it to be better than that. And that’s what I think is going to happen, going forward.”
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