It has been only three matches but England’s new Test captain Joe Root has already experienced the problem with the team. England can blow away any side on any given day with a stunning performance but can come up with utterly miserable performance on the very next day and it has become a trend for quite some time now. Their last three Test wins have been immediately followed by defeats and Root needs to sort out the problem as quickly as possible if he is looking to lead England to a home series win over South Africa for the first time since 1998.
The task, however, will not be an easy win. The Proteas have shown that they can bounce back in style as they won the second Test at Trent Bridge by a whopping margin of 340 runs after the 211-run loss in the series-opener at Lord’s. England took the lead by winning the third Test at The Oval but inconsistency being the hallmark of the team for quite some time now, they should remain cautious.
But Root is confident that his team can replicate the performance as he would be keen to start his captaincy career with a series.
“We weren’t good enough [at Trent Bridge] and I think it was important that we sat down after that and found a way to come back from that,” said Joe Root on Thursday (August 3). “The response the guys came up with was excellent.”
“It’s obviously a new challenge this week, and a slightly different frame of mind going into it,” said Root. “There is no reason why we can’t do that [play well] again.”
In addition to the lack of consistency, another problem with the team is that it still does not have a settled side. The hosts have used 14 players in the three matches so far. They started the series with two spinners with head coach Trevor Bayliss making it clear that they gave the team a much-needed balance. However, they dropped Liam Dawson at The Oval and included as many as three debutants in the penultimate match of the series.
Speaking about that, Root said:
“The majority of the top 7 and 8 really is pretty settled so that is nice to know. Early on in my captaincy I am trying to find out what I want and what’s going to be the most successful formula moving forward. I suppose it’s very difficult to use Test matches as experiments but it’s important to find out what works early on so you have the opportunity to be more consistent and more successful.
“You are trying to get the balance right between that consistency and making sure that we are playing a side that suits the surface that we come up against. Moving forward that is something we will have to get nailed down before we go to Australia. Hopefully, we will stumble across it very quickly,” he added.