The Ashes | Root seeks 'reset' of English Test setup, downplays 'selfish' decision over captaincy

All seems to be doomed and gloomy for the English cricket after a disastrous and “embarrassing” defeat in the Boxing Day Test and a lot of voices of the game are writing obituaries of Joe Root, the captain and Chris Silverwood, the all-powerful coach and also selector.

For Root though, the question of captaincy comes only after the end of the Ashes series and he is all in with all his mind and heart to try and win the next two Tests of the series. He downplayed the talks around captaincy a “selfish” act for him and refuted that he is contemplating any such move in mid of an away Ashes series.

“The series isn’t over yet. We’ve got two very big games and, more than anything, it’d be wrong to look past that. As a player and as a team, [we must] talk about the next hour, the next session or the next ball. That’s all we have to focus on and that applies to me as well, as captain. We’ve got to make sure we come away from the tour with better performances and a win or two under our belt.

“My energy has to be all about trying to win the next game. I can’t be selfish and start thinking about myself.”

Critics of the England Test side and many former players have also launched a scathing attack on the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) for compromising with the quality of County Cricket in the country and pushing it to extreme conditions in order to organise cash-rich white-ball tournaments in mid of English summer.

Root chose to downplay that aspect of criticism as well albeit conceding that England will have to go through a “reset” such as the one they went through a disastrous ODI World Cup campaign in 2015. However, he added that those “long conversations” over the health of first-class cricket in the country should be deferred for a later time.

He did not pin the blame on the “system” and instead said that he had all the “best 18 players from the county game” to choose from on this tour of Australia.

“That [the domestic structure] is a long conversation that should probably be had at another time. I would say that the best 18 players from the county game are definitely on this tour. There are some very talented players within this squad and we have to just keep looking to find ways of up-skilling ourselves and managing pressure better.

“With where the game is in our country right now, the only place you can really learn is in the hardest environment for what is a young batting group. They are having to learn here in the harshest environments. Maybe you look back at 2015 and the reset that happened in white-ball cricket and maybe that’s something that needs to be happening in our red-ball game.”

Joe Root looked deserted and tired after losing the third Test of the series which was his seventh Test loss in Australia as a captain and it’s highly unlikely he will be able to hold on to his leadership role after this Ashes loss.