England skipper Joe Root has accepted his side was outplayed in all the departments of the game by an impressive New Zealand side in a two-match long series that ended as his first series loss at home. However, he nitpicked ‘poor’ batting by his teammates as the reason behind a week that turned out to be ‘disappointing and frustrating.’
"It's been a frustrating and disappointing performance this week. I don't think we've given a fair account of ourselves. We've been outplayed in all three departments, particularly the batting. We didn't get the runs in the first innings. We missed chances in the field and didn't help our bowlers in that respect. And with the bat we were poor,” Root said.
Joe Root pointed out the afternoon session on the third day of the Test when England collapsed and was staring at an innings defeat as one of that session that ‘cost’ teams a Test match and the script was not any different for his side.
"Sometimes in Test cricket, you can have a poor session with the ball and you're still very much in the game. But a session like that can cost you a Test. That's where we find ourselves. It's cost us the series and we have some hard lessons to learn,” Root added.
Root also admitted his personal failure with the bat keeping in his mind the fact that he is the most experienced and highest-run getter among current England batsman. He conceded his failure to lead from the front which probably had serious consequences on the outlook of the England Test side in the series against New Zealand.
"As the leading run-scorer within our squad currently I feel like I've put a lot of pressure on those guys by not performing myself. As a captain you pride yourself on getting big runs and leading from the front and I've not managed to follow through on that. So I've probably compounded that situation slightly,” Root owned up his responsibility.
Addressing the issue of batting that has been failing England for a long time now, Root said that the team has to have ‘constructive’ but ‘hard conversations’ with each other over the issues that plagued the team in the recent past before setting their eyes on the future targets.
He also extended his confidence in the batsmen saying that all of them have established their credentials as batsmen who can churn out big runs and hence the situation is still far away from the point where all members of the team should hit the panic button.
"We have to look at where we can get better individually and collectively. We need to be honest about that. We have to have some hard conversations and move forward. We have to front up, look to get better and learn some hard lessons sometimes," he said. "We've all underperformed this week.
"But we have to be constructive. I think every single one of those guys has proven they can score big Test runs. I think it would be the wrong time to start panicking and trying to rip up all the hard work we've done for such a long period of time. It's something that historically we've done going into big tournaments and big Test series and it's made things even worse.
Root also dismissed ‘a lot of talk’ around the faulty techniques of England batsman and asserted that not all successful players going around in the world bat with similar style and technique.
"There's been a lot of talk about technique and batting. My view is batting is very much an individual thing. There's no right or wrong way of doing it. Look at the best players in the world: they all have different methods of how they play. How they stand, their bat paths, where they score their runs.
He said batting does not fit well in the binary of ‘right or wrong way’ and instead it is more about the mental capacity of an individual. He took his personal reference once again and urged his teammates to be ‘smarter’ in negating the various aspects of the opponent a bit better than he has been able to do in his career.
"For me, it's more of a mental thing. It's about clarity in their own game and managing passages of play. Managing different bowlers, different angles and conditions and doing that consistently well over an innings and a series. We can be a little bit smarter on occasions. It's somewhere that throughout my career I've got that horribly wrong on occasions,” Root said.
England Test players will have to wait until the first week of August to redeem themselves after the series loss to New Zealand. However, the task is unlikely to be any simpler for them against Virat Kohli-led Indian side that posses quality pacers and spinners capable of challenging them throughout the series.