Joe Root is the obvious guy to keep going, asserts Andrew Strauss
Andrew Strauss has thrown his weight behind Joe Root's captaincy and stated that he is the ideal man to lead the English cricket team going forward. However, the former English skipper asked the Yorkshire man to put up some decent performances to ensure he has less burdern on his shoulder.
Although Joe Root beat India at home 4-1 and managed to draw the Ashes 2-2, the sword of hanging over his shoulder, now more than ever. The uninspiring batting displays and the failure to convert the fifties to triple-digit scores has resulted in his confidence going down day by day and it came to such an extent that the demand of his sacking as skipper reached a fever pitch. Andrew Strauss, the key figure behind his appointment as the captain when Alastair Cook resigned from captaincy, has extended his support behind Root once again.
"I think he's learnt a lot on the job. He's had some tough circumstances to deal with. Obviously, the Ashes away in Australia wasn't a happy time for us. But he would have been buoyed by the performance at The Oval and he's the obvious guy to keep going," Strauss, who was appointed the chairman of the ECB's cricket committee last week, told Omnisport.
"He's learnt all the lessons there are to learn and now it's about him evolving and developing as a captain, but also making sure he looks after his own game at the same time. We need him to be putting in those sort of performances, maybe not Steve Smith level, but somewhere close. He's definitely capable of doing that."
While the scoreline doesn't tell you that, the Ashes showcased some of the glaring problems in English batting order, with the ambition of slotting the white-ball specialists in the Test team massively backfiring. However, that eventually led to Joe Denly batting at the top of the order and scoring three half-centuries, with two of them resulting in wins. Sam Curran too made a mark in the last Test, and put up a case for long selection - something that may give England long term benefits.
"I don't think you're going to get wholesale changes. They might have a look at one or two, someone like Ollie Pope – hopefully, Sam Curran will get a bit of a run in the side as well. I think it was great to see Denly and Burns earn themselves a bit more time and show that they're capable of opening the batting.
"You've got to start somewhere and they might end up being that partnership. We need a bit more consistency in our Test cricket, that's for sure. We've got the makings of a very good team but it's about learning how to win and how to make sure that you don't put yourself under real pressure, which maybe we've done too often."
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