‘It would be the best achievement of my career’: Joe Root’s big Ashes ambition isn’t what you think

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Joe Root has what he calls a “stinking cold”, but his eyes are gleaming with anticipation.

We’re speaking ahead of the Ashes, using Zoom – the video conferencing app by which Root spent far too much time conducting his captaincy duties during COVID-19.

The Joe Root who appeared on so many of those calls during the 2021-22 Ashes tour looked harried, exhausted and frustrated. He knew that England had played more Test cricket under those conditions than anyone else, and that Australia were comparatively fresh.

But he was also tearing his hair out at repeated errors from his troops, and also his own. Notably, a tendency to run deliveries through the gully and third-man regions had been a recurring area of weakness on bouncing Australian pitches.

More broadly, those kinds of dismissals have contributed to a perception that Root, despite having soared to heights not reached by any other England batsman in history, is not quite a first-rate player in Australia. The empty hundreds column here was famously pointed to by former Australian coach Darren Lehmann last year when he compared Root unfavourably to Steve Smith, Virat Kohli and Kane Williamson.

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Root laughed off Matthew Hayden’s recent pronouncement he would run nude around the MCG if the former skipper didn’t make a century this series, but he did speak with Lehmann, a sometime mentor, about the comments on ABC Radio.

“He actually did reach out to me after saying that,” Root tells this masthead.

“Everyone is entitled to their opinion. Your job as a commentator or a pundit is to give your opinion and if people don’t think I’m the best player in the world, it’s not going to help us win the Ashes by me getting angry about it.

“My job is to score runs, and I’ve tried to make sure that’s always my main focus, and I’ve got five brilliant opportunities to do that in this series.”

Root pauses briefly, then rolls through the past three Ashes tours of Australia, in 2013-14, 2017-18 and ’21-22.

“[The] first one was a very difficult one, losing 5-0, and there was a lot of stuff going on there,” Root says. “The second one was very similar. It was my first tour as captain, there were a few off-the-field things with [Cameron] Bancroft and Jonny [Bairstow] and headbutts and a few beers flying around onto people’s heads and stuff.

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“And the last one was COVID and, as a team, we’d played 20-odd Test matches in those environments – everyone was absolutely cooked and it was a very difficult tour for a number of different reasons around that.”

Before the interview, I’d been told that Root didn’t wish to spend much time ruminating on the last Ashes tour. But now he is speaking openly about the difficulties.

“I remember getting to Sydney and we didn’t have a coaching staff,” he says.

“We had me, Paul Collingwood and Graham Thorpe were the three coaches that were left, everyone else was isolating for two weeks. So there were a number of different things that didn’t help.

“That’s not trying to take anything away from Australia and the fact they were far superior to us and outplayed us convincingly, but the fact is, this time around, I’ve got all that experience to lean on, I’m playing some nice cricket, I’ve not got the responsibility of captaincy and the extra workload that entails, and I’m determined to just enjoy what a brilliant tour it’s going to be.”

I ask Root whether he thinks he will be able to walk to the middle with a clearer head this time, as a senior pro in Ben Stokes’ team but not a titled leader.

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“Yeah, potentially,” he says. “At least this time in Sydney I won’t be absolutely knackered from throwing balls at the rest of the squad trying to get them ready as well, not the amount I did last time anyway. It’s important to learn from previous experiences and tours, but it’s also important to be where you are right now.

“This series is not about me, it’s about us winning an Ashes. If at any stage it starts to become that in my own mind, then I’m doing a disservice to this team by not being the senior player I need to be within it. The full focus has to be around us winning. If I’m scoring big runs, that’s going to help.

“If we come away from this and I haven’t got a hundred, and we win the series, that would be probably the best achievement of my whole career. That’s where it sits with me.”

That’s a big pronouncement from Root, who has always tended to do his boldest talking with the bat. Since he handed over the captaincy to Stokes in 2022, his talents have been given room to flourish.

In 41 Tests over that time, Root has purred to 3654 runs at 58, striking at nearly 67 runs per 100 balls, along with 14 hundreds. He has been the beating heart of the “Bazball” batting order, a master craftsman giving stability and security to the likes of Ben Duckett and Harry Brook around him.

Partly, this is about what Root feels he owes to Stokes, a loyal deputy who put his body through plenty of pain to keep England’s Test match flag flying during a period when the white-ball teams of Eoin Morgan were the ECB’s priority.

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“He threw everything into helping me out when I was England captain, put his body through a lot, [and was able to] take on the big moments in games, [and] bowl long spells,” Root says of Stokes. “He would do everything he could to help my England team when I was captain, and it’s now my opportunity and my turn to repay that favour.

“As a senior player, whether that’s in terms of performance on the field – that’s the most important one – but also whether it’s messaging [within the team], trying to create something outside of the norm over this period, that’s my role.”

Something that was outside the norm for Root, as a Test player at least, was the use of the ramp or scoop shot. Sam Konstas used it to great effect on Boxing Day last year but has since struggled to pick the right moments. Root’s breakdown of the shot provides a window into his batting brain.

“If it can create a little bit of chaos and take a bowler off their length, that can not only benefit you, but the guy at the other end,” he says. “For the next three or four overs it could completely upset the rhythm of the game for the opposition.

“You want to evaluate the risk but also see the upside of it as well. The reason you’re doing it is not for Instagram clicks or a few likes here and there.

“One thing I always take into account is does this situation require it, and sometimes that might be when everything is in your favour, and sometimes it might be the opposite – when everything is in the bowler’s favour, and you’re trying to wrestle momentum back into your hands. I don’t think there’s an exact science to it. Sometimes the best time to do it is as randomly as possible because no one is anticipating it, and it’s hard to anticipate as a bowler. That’s how I try to use it.”

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With Pat Cummins missing from the first Test in Perth and Josh Hazlewood now under something of a cloud after complaining of hamstring tightness in his sole Sheffield Shield game before the series, England certainly have the opportunity to create some chaos in Perth. While still formidable, the Australian bowling attack is starting to resemble a remark from former Indian batsman Rahul Dravid, who referred to himself and Sachin Tendulkar as “creaking terminators” at the outset of their final tour here in 2011-12.

Stokes, for what it’s worth, has predicted a huge tour for Root. They have confidence in each other – the leader who has created an environment for the England test team to flourish, and the senior pro who is doing more flourishing than most.

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“A lot of the time if the game wasn’t moving in the direction you wanted, if you needed someone to make something happen, Ben would generally be the person I’d turn to,” Root says. “He’d always have that lead-from-the-front mentality in the way he went about things.

“Not that other guys didn’t, but he was that person I would always call upon, and you could see those leadership traits in him, in the way that he played. That was always something he was naturally going to be good at when he took over as captain.

“The other side of his captaincy is the most impressive bit – the way he’s been able to create this environment where guys feel they can express themselves and become the best players their skill set can possibly be. He’s created a really enjoyable team to be a part of.

“Sometimes even when things aren’t going well, if you can still create a good environment you’re more likely to turn things back in your favour, and he and Brendon [McCullum] are very good at making people feel confident and at their best as often as possible.”

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Perhaps that’s why, stinking cold and all, Root sounds so enthused by the series about to start. As we part ways, he is cheered to be told that the late Bob Simpson waited 30 Tests for his first hundred of any kind, but made up for it by turning it into a triple century. That’s the kind of thinking England will indulge in on this trip.

“It’s very hard for anyone to play well with fear of failure in their mind,” Root says.

“If that’s the overriding factor in anything you do then it’s always going to be very difficult to see the positive in any situation, and to be consistent with coming out on the right side of results.

“One thing this group tries to do is how we can positively move the game in our favour. I’d say that’s the most important thing for us, rather than getting caught up on what could go wrong.”

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