"What is the most important? For me, it is his batting. That is the one you most want to fire and for that to happen you need him to go back to enjoying his cricket, not overcomplicating or overthinking it"
Tuesday 26 November 2019 21:49, UK
After England's first Test defeat to New Zealand, Nasser Hussain looks at Joe Root's slump with the bat, the effect the captaincy is having and why a team batting policy is not the answer to the current problems…
England haven't got as many world class players as we'd like in the batting department, let's be honest. Since the retirement of that wonderful batting line-up of Alastair Cook, Andrew Strauss, Jonathan Trott, Kevin Pietersen etcetera, there has been a decline in our red-ball batting.
I think we have two world-class batsmen in our side at the minute and they are Ben Stokes and Joe Root. And over the last five years or so, certainly before this year, Root has been absolutely phenomenal.
He is one of the great players that we have produced in red-ball and white-ball cricket, he is an outstanding player and, for me, more important than his captaincy is that Joe goes back to batting as well as he has done in the past.
What amazes me - and this has been missed over the past couple of days - is that Joe hasn't been through this sort of mini-slump, as he calls it, before. It is amazing how consistent he has been and we've actually marvelled at that consistency over the years. I would look up in the commentary box and he is 40 not out again, he very rarely gets out for low scores.
This is part of a development as an international cricketer, you go through these phases whoever you are. I think Sachin Tendulkar probably did it when he was on 99 hundreds but Joe is going through it now. Let's not presume that the captaincy is affecting his batting, that is an easy assumption to make.
Look at Virat Kohli, Kane Williamson, Ricky Ponting, Mike Atherton, Graham Gooch or whoever and it shows that you can bat just as well as captain. At the moment though, I see Joe as being a little bit weighed down by the expectation and the pressures of captaincy, just in his body language.
When he speaks to Ian Ward at the cart, in a white-ball game he is full of energy, he is bubbly, he is cheeky and he has no responsibility apart from scoring runs. Even when they had a bad-ish day and he's got runs, he's still in love with the game and has that buzz about him.
In Test match cricket even when they've had a reasonably good day, I see a lad who is trying to be captain and looks like the weight of the world is on his shoulders, like he is trying to overcomplicate and overthink when actually Joe plays at his best when he is not overcomplicating or overthinking.
That is another thing but when I watched Joe bat in the summer, I didn't think he needed an overhaul of his technique which is what he has gone away and done a little bit. I thought he just needed a bit of tinkering, he was just a little bit out of sync with his movement, he was getting a bit planted rather than tap-and-go.
I might be wrong, Joe knows his game better than anyone and he might think he needs these extravagant movements that he is doing.
The double-whammy is doing all that and having the captaincy. If he is going to stay as captain then he is going to need help, Chris Silverwood as head coach is going to need to alleviate the pressure and with two or three days between Tests, he needs to say to Joe "go away and work on your batting, we need Joe Root the world-class batsman back. I'll look after the various other things, you go and work on your batting."
Ashley Giles might well have been talking in response to a question when he said Joe would still be captain for the next Ashes series and in his position, of course you have to back your captain, you can't just say "well, we'll see". But I don't think you can back your captain for a series that is still 25 Test matches away, especially given what they have beforehand.
A five-Test tour of India for a start, look what happened to Alastair Cook at the end of that. What you need and this is what Duncan Fletcher used to say about me when I was going through a bad patch, "oh Nass is a bit of an all-rounder, it's not just his batting, he's got the captaincy as well" so Joe needs one of his two disciplines to fire.
At the moment, neither is particularly firing. Which is the most important? For me, it is his batting. That is the one you most want to fire and for that to happen you need him to go back to enjoying his cricket, not overcomplicating or overthinking it.
I also think it can confuse the whole team if you have some kind of team policy of needing to bat time. No, you don't need to bat time, you need to get runs. It is not how long you bat, it is how many you get.
I applaud the fact that they have gone back to the more old-fashioned occupy-the-crease openers in Rory Burns, Dom Sibley, Zak Crawley, Joe Denly or whoever but that middle-order has been dynamic for England and has rescued them over the last few years. The likes of Root, Stokes, Jos Buttler, Jonny Bairstow, Moeen Ali have been brilliant.
Stokes' innings at Headingley, for instance, wasn't just occupying the crease. That was application, playing the situation, batting for the next day when he first came in and then when Jack Leach came in, smash it. Buttler has done it on a number of occasions, occupy the crease and then smash when it gets down to batting with nine, 10 and 11.
I couldn't have gone and told Atherton or Alec Stewart how to bat, they know how to bat. It is about getting runs and at that level you shouldn't be telling people "we're going to occupy the crease." You have got to his level, how have you got runs? Play that way. Get runs, that is all that counts.
Play the situation, play what is in front of you. We need to produce cricketers who can think for themselves and play the situation. That is why I held Stokes up as the template the other day. Over the last year or two, Stokes - in any format - has played the situation absolutely perfectly. That should be the template of how we want our cricketers to perform.
If you're not getting runs then you can try to get a bit smart as a captain. Players are looking at you and because you're not getting runs you can think "I'll win this game by my captaincy" or try and be a bit smart and almost try and reinvent the wheel.
I think that is a dangerous road to go down.
When it comes to the results away from home, everyone is having a go at Root but this has been a problem for a long time. England away from home is the major thing on Giles' to-do list. Strauss did it as a captain but he never really solved it as a director of cricket in as much as away from home, our results have been poor.
We don't score enough runs, at home 350 is a good score and will win you Test match but away from home, as we've just seen, 350 can leave you vulnerable and you can end up losing.
Stuart Broad and Jimmy Anderson have been phenomenal at home but away from home with a finger spinner and medium-quicks, however much Root shuffles it, he is still going to have the same pack of cards.
We saw that in Australia in the last Ashes so England need to start looking at quicker, skiddier bowlers. We had Darren Gough and Craig White with slingier actions, who tried to reverse it and take the pitch out of the equation.
Root does need to learn to use Jofra Archer a bit better but I'm getting a bit fed up of everything either being Archer's fault or Root's fault for how he uses Archer. "Archer should take the new ball", "Henry Nicholls has been peppered the night before so Archer should start the next morning", "we need a go-to enforcer, we'll have Archer", "we need someone to clean up the tail, that's Archer". Then he ends up bowling 42 overs and people wonder why his speeds are down!
It has got to be a balanced attack where other people contribute. If you look at the two best attacks at the moment, Australia have got Mitchell Starc, Josh Hazlewood, Pat Cummins, James Pattinson all backed up by Nathan Lyon, with India there is Jasprit Bumrah, Mohamed Shami, Umesh Yadav and Ishant Sharma backed up by two very good spinners.
With us, it seems to be Archer or bust and he will go bust if we keep going down that road.
Root needs to learn that if he does have this extra pace available, how and when to use it. There is plenty there to build on, plenty of opportunities and I wouldn't write off Joe as a captain.
After this second Test in Hamilton, his next tour is South Africa. It is not an easy tour but South Africa are vulnerable at the moment. They are probably a side you'd want to see at the moment if you are struggling, albeit preferable at home.
There are opportunities for Joe to start winning games but A, he needs to get better and B, English cricket needs to give him a better set of cards to help him improve.
Watch day one of the second Test between New Zealand and England from 9.30pm, Thursday on Sky Sports Cricket.
