New England captain Joe Root must hope that Gary Ballance recall proves a success

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  • Joe Root has coped under siege from some of the world’s fastest bowlers but, as the newly anointed England captain, he is well and truly in the firing line now.

    And the boy who hitherto can do no wrong will be fielding questions off the back foot all summer if his first big call does not pay off – the recall of Gary Ballance.

    By all accounts Root’s influence is a key factor behind England’s decision to hand another chance to his Yorkshire chum Ballance, who was last seen in Test whites edging his way around Bangladesh.

    That tour, which saw him scratch out 24 runs from four painful innings, was already his second bite at the cherry after struggling against Australian pace in 2015. If he does not show marked improvement against South Africa, and particularly speed king Kagiso Rabada, there is no way England will let him dock in Brisbane ahead of November’s (pencilled in for now) first Ashes Test.

    But Ballance’s return is hardly Yorkshire cronyism in action. There are a heap of reasons why the left-hander has been favoured – 815 of them in fact.

    That is the amount of runs that Ballance has scored in the County Championship this season – second only to the evergreen Kumar Sangakkara – having broadened his shoulders over the winter with the Yorkshire captaincy.

    The 27-year-old needed to make that type of statement to turn a call-up from an improbability into a possibility. All Root has reportedly done is nudge him over the line.

    But what happens if Ballance flounders at Lord’s this week? The decision to call him up in the first place will be lumbered upon Root rightly or wrongly. He will also be praised or pilloried for the batting line-up, the bowling choices, the body language, the fielding placements.

    And in case he forgets, he still has his batting record to worry about as well. Now, for the first time in his career, Root’s burdens will extend beyond the next ball he faces at the crease.

    The relevancy of a captain in many team sports can be debated but certainly not in cricket. When you are standing in a field for more than six hours a day the mind invariably wonders but while others will be thinking about what they are having for tea, Root will be scrutinising and second-guessing every decision he has made and is yet to make.

    As far as previous England captains go, David Gower perhaps shares most with a happy-go-lucky Root in the personality stakes but even he was ground down – twice – by the nature of the beast.

    “If your side is losing, then it can be very lonely,” Gower told The Telegraph in a recent interview. “You have these insidious little doubts. It takes you five overs to make a decision. And the reason it all ends in tears is that inevitably, at some stage, it gets too much.”

    Gower was forced out for good in 1989 and his relationship with successor Graham Gooch rapidly declined. Ian Botham resigned during the Ashes. Kevin Pietersen quit after three Tests. Alastair Cook stepped down after a 4-0 thrashing to India. If this is the kind of fate that awaits Root, he must be mad.

    But it would have been bonkers not to accept. The prestige of captaining your country and guiding it to victory is unparalleled – it is just that the negatives will be felt all the more acutely.

    So in supporting the return of Ballance, Root is tied up in another sub-plot just as his first chapter as England captain begins. He can only hope it does not become the main story of his summer.

    THIN EXCUSES FOR SRI LANKA WEIGHT PROBLEMS

    Lasith Malinga is – quite literally – the biggest culprit of Sri Lanka’s fatness farce but you can have a certain amount of sympathy for his scathing assessment of the blazers in charge.

    After Dayasiri Jaysekara, Sri Lanka’s sports minister, pointed out that the team was not fit enough, Malinga replied: “What does a monkey know about a parrot’s nesting hollow? This is like a monkey getting into a parrot’s nest and talking about it.”

    The sympathy doesn’t rest in Malinga’s flimsy defence over his size, but that his bosses have only just woken up to the problem.

    Just two players in the entire squad for the current series against Zimbabwe are thought to have passed an endurance test. While professional athletes should of course take some responsibility for their shape, why is it only now that the administrators have recognised the situation?

    As elite sport increasingly uses technology to identify marginal gains – there have been tales of teams searching for the comfiest of pillows to ensure a good night’s sleep – that Sri Lankan standards have been allowed to slip so badly is a damning indictment.

    The resignation of head coach Graham Ford last month will not fix a culture of laziness that is deeply embedded across the board, including the board.

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