Twenty reasons why the ECB chose Joe Root as their new England captain. 1. He’s a jolly good batsman. 2. He’s from Yorkshire (ergo, on the same principle that all Scotsman are dour, he’s bound to be canny). 3. All England captains should look no older than 12. 4 years of age. Er, that’s it.
There will almost certainly be some nit pickers who point to the fact that he has precious little experience in the job, but this is not something you sit an O Level for. You learn on the job. Like a plumbers’ mate. Then, when the washing machine starts spouting hot water all over the kitchen (as, metaphorically speaking, it always does when England are involved) you at least have a vague idea where to find the stopcock.
I remember when another canny Tyke, Ray Illingworth, was nearing the end of his time as captain of Leicestershire, and potential successors were being groomed for the job. One of the candidates wrote down everything Illy did in a notebook, which presumably led to entries like: “12.32pm, moved fine leg a bit squarer. Must remember that one.” And did he get the job? Er, no actually.
Personally, I’m a little surprised that Joe got the nod. Unless he has the three lions tattooed on his left buttock he was always ahead of Stokes on the grounds of an ink-free complexion, but you have to admit that (and I’m indebted to a Mr K Pietersen for kindly writing in to point this out) following a Cook with a Root doesn’t add much glamour to the position.
You’ve only got to look at the careers of John Wayne, or Michael Caine, to know that you’ve got to sound the part. It’s hard to imagine True Grit – starring Marion Morrison, or The Italian Job – starring Maurice Micklewhite taking much more than 58p at the box office, and the PA chappie booming out: “And here come England led out by Joe Root,” may not induce an overpowering urge to jump up onto your seat and start belting out Jerusalem.
However, it’s not so much a question of how many diamond studs you have in your ears as what you have in the space between them, and Root will already have observed and absorbed some of the lessons of history. Not least when it comes to the crucial art of making a decision and sticking to it.
He might already have consulted a former England captain on this very subject. “So let me get this right Nasser. You looked at the pitch in Brisbane in 2002, and agreed with all your team-mates that it was a total shirt front, and only someone with the IQ of a cauliflower would think about inviting the opposition to bat first. Then you won the toss, and said, ‘we’ll bowl’.
“Er, yes.” “And the score at stumps?” “Um, 364-2.”
Another important issue for Root, and one he has first-hand experience of, is how to handle DRS. And a mole inside the ECB tells me that it was his answers to two questions on the captaincy examination paper which clinched it for him.
Q: What do you do when the umpire says: “Not out,” and Stuart Broad says: “Skip, it was knocking the lot over?”
A: Ignore him.
Q: What do you do when the umpire says: “Not out,” and Broad says: “Skip, I’m not sure. It might have been missing leg.”
A: Try not to faint, and then send it straight upstairs.
Then there is the question of how you deal with the media. For example, he can stand a bit of stick in the newspapers, but he needs to stay well away from tuning in to into Sky TV’s evening Verdict programme. A skipper’s morale can survive reading: “Root showed hisinexperience by keeping the spinners on for a bit too long,” over his breakfast egg, but it certainly won’t survive Bob Willis offering his tuppence worth on the same issue.
“Well, Charles, in my opinion, hanging’s too good for him. I mean, if we want someone with a bit more
animation, we can nip round to Madame Tussauds and stick a waxworks dummy at first slip instead, and what’s more, if anyone’s got some medieval stocks and a pile of rotting tomatoes…..”
And that’s Bob in one of his more generous moods.
Then there’s the all-important business of Press conferences, and whether you have the strength of character to stick religiously to the ECB’s official coaching manual, which is to treat all media gatherings in the same way as a captured pilot being interrogated behind enemy lines.
Name, rank, and serial number only, and if you find yourself cracking under the relentless questioning: “Come on, why did you bowl Bloggs from the pavilion end after lunch?” you can always claim you’ve got a couple of tickets for the theatre, and walk out. Which is what DI Gower did at Lord’s in 1989, a series in which Press conferences became such an ordeal that, during one of them, he responded to an especially stupid question by headbutting a trestle table, Basil Fawlty-style, so violently that all the hacks’ tape recorders flew across the room.
He will also need some coaching from ex-captains as to how to avoid carefully laid traps, in which case John Emburey, placed in charge for two Tests during the chaotic, multiple captains summer of 1988, can perhaps talk him through an extract from his rest day Press conference at Lord’s.
Q: “John, what do you think about the West Indies’ terrible over-rate?”
A: “Not thought about it really.”
Q: “Well, do you think something should be done about it?”
A: “Like what?”
Q: “How’s about fining them?”
A: “Well, I suppose that might be a possibility.”
Next day’s headline? “Fine ‘Em!” Embers Slams Caribbean Crawlers!”
There are times when a captain can employ black humour as a means of deflecting thorny questions, such as when Graham Gooch, busy captaining England to a whitewash 3-0 defeat during the 1993 Test series in India, bemoaned his dreadful record with losing the toss. “I’ve always been,” said Gooch, in that lugubrious way of his, “a hopeless tosser.”
So that’s the way forward for Root. Either master the art of speaking at length without actually saying anything, or else make your audience laugh.
Like New Zealand captain Kane Williamson, on the wrong end of a hammering after putting South Africa into bat in Pretoria last winter. “It was a good toss to lose,” said Kane. “And unfortunately, I won it.”
This piece originally featured in The Cricket Paper, February 17 2017
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