4 minute read The vast majority of the time since he made his debut in 2012, England’s batting has been Joe Root and a revolving cast of team-mates who seem to have it in them to play a decent innings, but most likely won’t. In the recent five-Test series in India, only one
Continue readingTag: Joe Root
Did you see… Joe Root blaming the ball for his drops?
2 minute read When Joe Root drops catches, Joe Root blames the ball. Remember when English commentators were talking up Josh Tongue’s “extra pace” because he was bowling 85mph? That seems even more nonsensical now after Mark Wood made the Headingley crowd gasp at not just the obvious threat of his bowling but
Continue readingJoe Root? Dawid Malan? Harry Brook? Which batter isn’t in England’s first choice World Cup XI
5 minute read Do you know England’s first-choice XI for the upcoming 50-over World Cup? Do England? There’s a lot of job sharing in the various England teams these days. Players flit in and flit out to the extent that it’s actually pretty hard to identify the first choice XI. That’s mostly okay
Continue readingFive talking points after England’s fourth-ever Test win in Pakistan (and second in a fortnight)
5 minute read The second Test was “a differently played game” according to Ben Stokes. It still resulted in England winning in Pakistan though, which is not a thing that had happened too often until this month. The match has left us with quite a few half-baked thoughts rolling around our largely empty
Continue readingLet’s celebrate England’s erratic slip fielding
3 minute read When the opposition make 550, it’s rarely because of a missed catch. It’s more a result of all the other chances that weren’t even created. At the same time, an innings of 550 will tend to feature a fair few misses, if only because it’s such a huge volume of
Continue readingCaptain Stokes v Captain Root
3 minute read Everything’s amazing and fun and positive under the new England captain. Remember that previous guy? Man was he a miserable arsehole. Didn’t have a clue, did he? Whatever happened to him? Sometimes you accidentally reveal something about the past. We remember being on this cookery course in Thailand once with
Continue readingJoe Root steps down to give England an exciting new problem
5 minute read The England Test team is going to remain awash with problems for quite some time to come. The best you can hope for as a fan is that they at least keep those problems fresh and interesting. The Joe Root captaincy problem was getting a bit stale, so at least
Continue readingFive fiendishly difficult questions for England on their West Indies tour
3 minute read England’s tour of the West Indies gets underway on Tuesday with the hotly-anticipated match against TBA. Three Test matches follow during which we may or may not get answers to these five fiendishly difficult questions. (1) Is this a ‘development tour’ or not? Development tour? Who said ‘development tour’? Actually,
Continue readingRoot and Silverwood have the Jack Leach that they created
3 minute read The England Test team run by Joe Root and Chris Silverwood is not big on picking spinners. It is even less big on picking Jack Leach. A rare appearance in the first Ashes Test saw the left-armer get walloped, so how comfortable will the two head honchos be about picking
Continue readingThe almighty cumulative power of Joe Root’s nothing shot
2 minute read “Oh that’s a nothing shot,” they say – but only when you get out to it. We were thinking about this particular shot of Joe Root’s after watching the BBC highlights the other day. The BBC highlights are an hour long and with no ads, it’s what you might call
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