Former England National Cricket Team batter Mark Butcher questioned the England and Wales Cricket Board's (ECB) decision to reappoint Joe Root as their captain in the Tests, in place of Ben Stokes. ECB announced Root as their captain in the format yesterday, July 31, as Stokes announced his retirement last month, after the Test series defeat against New Zealand at home.
ECB took enough time before appointing Joe Root as their leader in the format. They announced Stephen Fleming as the successor to Brendon McCullum on the same day. With Root as the captain, will the team take steps forward to a new dawn? Mark Butcher has doubts.
Root's previous stint as the captain of the England cricket team was a forgettable chapter in England cricket. Root has established himself as one of the best batters across Tests and ODIs, but Root as a captain was not very fruitful for England in the past.
Joe Root holds England's record for the most Test matches. The team managed to win 27 matches, as many losses, and eleven draws in 65 matches in total. While the initial stage of Joe Root's captaincy looked promising, winning back-to-back Test series on home grounds, it gradually lost momentum as the team suffered a string of defeats.
Joe Root resigned after only one win in 17 matches
With a 41.53 win percentage, Root surpassed Michael Vaughan’s record to become England's most successful Test captain but resigned after leading the team to only one win in 17 Tests, including a heavy Ashes series defeat against the arch-rival Australia.
Following Root's resignation, the induction of Ben Stokes as the captain and Brendon McCullum as the team's head coach, and Rob Key as the director transformed the team's mode of playing Test cricket. Mark Butcher claimed that the appointment of Root indicates backward steps instead of forward steps in the progression of the England cricket team.
Mark Butcher does not agree with the ECB's decision to retain Joe Root as captain
Butcher observed that without the captaincy role, Root flourished as a batter with the potential to gift the team multiple valuable moments in the future. With the captaincy on his shoulders, can he continue batting in the same way? The question remains.
"Ben Stokes, Brendon McCullum, Rob Key were the reaction to Root’s captaincy the first time around. This revolutionising of the way we play Test match cricket came off the back of 17 Test matches with only one victory under Joe," Butcher told Sky Sports.
The former cricketer mentioned that Harry Brook, the white-ball formats skipper, could be an ideal option for Test captaincy, to allow Root only as a batter in the format.
"The best thing that happened to him and his game was not being captain anymore. His batting since has been on a different level, and I rather hoped it would stay that way, and he would be a loyal lieutenant to Harry Brook or whoever they decided was going to get the job permanently", he added.
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