Joe Root - Driving force of Eng cricket

Barnaby Read 10:02 11/11/2015
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  • Root will be hoping to make a big impact against Pakistan.

    To say that 2015 has been a standout year for Joe Root would be a drastic understatement.

    And to pinpoint his importance to English cricket across all three formats is nigh on impossible, such is his side’s reliance on their chief run-scorer.

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    At just 24, Root has become a prized scalp for the opposition alongside fellow perennial run-machine, captain Alastair Cook. In his 35 Tests, 59 ODIs and 10 T20Is to date, Root has amassed over 5,000 runs and registered 14 centuries.

    However, the numbers do not tell the true story. His scratchiest of knocks ooze class, his most fluent as graceful as a Swan Lake rendition by the Kirov Ballet.

    Aged just 24, Root has registered 14 centuries for England so far.

    But for all his fleet of foot and choirboy looks, there is a steeliness to Root that thrives in the heat of battle that is explained by a moment in the presence of a patient, humble and extremely confident young man that was only dethroned as the world’s number one Test batsman on Tuesday.

    He has held both ODI and Test number one status this year and is sure to return to the top many times over the remaining years of his England career.

    For some, this pressure would be all too much. For Root, it is yet another object to take in his stride.

    “You are going to get expectation. That is part of the sport and having had a good summer and being in a nice bit of form,” Root told Sport360° at an Etihad Airways masterclass session with the England ODI squad earlier this week.

    “I wouldn’t say I felt any pressure how this last series has gone.”

    The Yorkshire batsman has scored 3020 Test run at an average of 54.90.

    This assuredness of self – do not get it confused with arrogance – is part of the ‘new’ England.

    It is a team that has finally caught up with the rest of the world and thanks to the likes of Root and team-mates Alex Hales, Jason Roy, Jos Buttler, Jonny Bairstow and James Taylor, are ready to clear boundaries with ease and innovation on par with the likes of AB de Villiers, Rohit Sharma and Brendon McCullum.

    While they cannot be placed in the same class as the latter three names on that list, Root believes that consistency will come the more the side become accustomed to its new “fearless” approach to the shorter formats.

    “I think it was almost such a big change in such a short space of time that one thing you’re not going to get from such a big change is consistency,” said Root who was part of England’s side at the World Cup in New Zealand and Australia earlier this year that bombed out at the group stage. 

    “If you look at the members of this side over the last six months, there’s a lot of new faces, a lot of guys who are slightly less experienced. So it’s very hard to expect guys to come in and from the start of their career really perform and be able to outplay the world champions. 

    “To everyone’s credit, everyone throughout that series (v New Zealand in June) managed to do that. I wasn’t involved but watching from the outside, you could see there was that energy there, that talent and fearless nature that we need to make sure we take forward into this winter and moving forward.”

    As the current vice-captain to Cook in Tests, Root has been earmarked by the ECB as a future leader in his own right. And by the time the 2020 World T20 rolls around, Root will be just 29 and the likely skipper of his nation across all formats. 

    However, his focus for now is well and truly on helping English cricket blossom into a well-oiled unit in the shorter format in a bid to add to England’s sole ICC trophy, the T20 crown in 2010.

    With a Twenty20 World Cup to come in India in 2016 and both the 2017 ICC Champions Trophy and 2019 World Cups to be hosted on English soil, Root & co’s development over the coming months has the potential to catapult England to some historic one-day performances.

    “There’s a Twenty20 World Cup around the corner and all the momentum you can pick from one-day cricket and take forward into that is massive,” added Root who has scored more Test runs than anyone else in 2015 with 1,001. 

    “With two major competitions in a couple of years time as well, we want to make sure we keep building on this great start to this new brand of cricket that we’ve started to develop and play and make it something a bit more sustainable and consistent.”

    Root’s charm and positivity is infectious, as is his passion for the game he is lucky enough to earn a profession from. 

    Although he has become England’s saving grace in dark times, Root does not see the team as a two-man show. Despite the recent failures around him in England’s middle-order, Root believes there is both talent and big hundreds all around him in the batting order and that the likes of Bairstow, Buttler, Ian Bell, James Taylor and Moeen Ali will all prove that in the coming months, starting with Pakistan.

    “I think every time we go into a game I can feel that every guy around me is capable of going in and making big scores,” he said. 

    “You look at this squad of players attacking this one day series and we bat all the way down to10. The whole squad of players, even the guys not playing, are more than capable of making contributions and big scores. 

    “They’ve done it in one-day cricket before so this is an exciting place to be in this batting unit. 

    “Hopefully, from the start, we can be explosive with our batting. Maybe the scores won’t be 350/400 in these conditions but hopefully we can make big enough totals to win games of cricket over here. That warm-up game (v Hong Kong) was really good for us. We got good time in the middle to get used to the surfaces and we can be really confident going into the first game.”

    With Root nestling in among them, if others get in then there is no reason why England should not be confident.

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