MARTIN JOHNSON

Joe Root has aged so rapidly in Australia that he may even have been able to get through a spot of Christmas shopping without some department store doorman asking him if he’d like to pop into their Grotto to sit on Santa’s knee. And probably just as well.
The events of the past month or so have been bad enough for the cherubic England captain without having some red robed fatso with a white beard chortling “ho, ho, ho” in his ear. Had it been mistaken for yet another Australian taunt, rather than the traditional cheery greeting, some kind of reta...