Joe Root Stays Tight-Lipped About His Captaincy in the midst of a looming whitewash

It seems that the English team has entered into a difficult phase and the English skipper, Joe Root sees no immediate exit from the same. On the contrary, other than their on-field issues, they have been gripped by the raging pandemic off the field.

With everything slipping away from Root, he is desperate to latch onto whatever light he has found himself surrounded by. He has been the solitary man bearing the English batting on his shoulders with no help from others whatsoever.

As England travel to Sydney for the fourth Ashes Test, their coaches including Chris Silverwood will not be with the team after testing positive for Covid-19. In these desperate times, England are being helped by everyone who have been with the team and are chipping in with every possible bit of assistance.

Root said, “With the number of coaches we've had missing, it's made things slightly disjointed and challenging," Root said. "But it's an opportunity for us as a group to come tightly together, help each other prepare as well as we can do, and stand up in a bit of adversity and use that in a positive way when we get out there.”

He continued, “We are all feeling for those guys sat in isolation desperately wanting to help us turn things around and we've got an opportunity in these two games to do that. We have to make sure we stand up and show we are a better team, which I know we are than we've produced so far on this tour. See that as an opportunity, don't see it as a heavy burden, see it as a real chance to make some big Test runs, win a game with the ball in hand and walk away from the trip with something."

Sadly, for England, their batters have struggled the most and despite retaliation from the English bowlers so far, all the hard work couldn’t come to pass.

He also quoted, “You can dwell on what's happened so far or we can look at the opportunities that present themselves in the immediate future. That can be the making of some sides and the start of something, that's the approach we'll have to take."

With the fourth Test all set to start from Wednesday, it will be an interesting call about how England will go about it with every batter in their ranks barring Root struggling to move forward.

The opening conundrum for the visitors has been their problem not just away from home but even back home as well. Rory Burns was one of the worst English batters throughout 2020 and his form in the Ashes opening Test went further down.

Haseeb Hameed couldn’t conjure anything special either as the Australian express bowlers have been relentless. It is to be seen if Dan Lawrence finally gets a call to replace the likes of Hameed and a returning Burns or does England stick to the same combination.

Root also quoted, “Whatever we're presented with here in two days we have to make sure we are on the right side of that and make sure we try to wrestle that momentum early on the Test match then drive it home.”

Joe didn’t want to open up about his posterity as the English skipper. However, with every wrong reason getting ticked for the visitors, someone will have to be the expendable and Chris Silverwood seems to be the likeliest contender to be made culpable for this decline.

Root concluded by saying, “I'll look at my future beyond this tour at the end of it. Don't think that's a distraction that should be around the group or I should be wasting energy on right now. I need to make sure I'm throwing everything I can into these next two games, I owe that to this team and the players."