Why Ben Stokes should replace Joe Root as England Test captain

It was as bad a loss as any in England’s winless winter, or their winning streak of 17 matches in just over a year. The pain was as much about the manner – the first seven combined for 127 runs in 14 innings, averaging nine – as it was about the margin, 10 wickets which could have been even worse.

Root’s rhetoric was that one bad day, the third, shouldn’t undo the positive work of this tour. For those watching, it was all so horribly familiar that nearly all of the gains – and it would be wrong to pretend there weren’t encouraging performances in Antigua and Barbados – were brutally wiped out. Just when they had a chance to prove they were making tangible progress, they managed to plumb a new depth.

West Indies, another modest side with an appetite to upset England, were resilient enough to pounce, having dealt blows in the first two Tests.

England were educated in the difficulties of playing in the Caribbean, where different islands pose such different challenges. It was only fitting that the West Indies won in Grenada, where their support was strong, and captain Kraigg Brathwaite got the winning points.

One of the remarkable things about Root is that those desperate losses don’t seem to dampen his appetite for work. The sense of duty is extreme and admirable. When he spoke yesterday, it was not about returning home, talking to his loved ones and considering his future. It was a desire to continue. As he said those words, the feeling was that he would look back a decade from now and recognize that he was hanging on.

This tour was awkward, stuck between eras. The defeat of the Ashes blew that squad and management structure apart, leaving a power vacuum in English men’s cricket – a CEO soon to be absent, and no permanent chairman, chief executive, head coach or selector. The pressure to get these appointments seems to be increasing every day.

With everyone around him having the word interim in their job title, it wasn’t unreasonable to give Root one more streak to prove the team was headed down a new path.

Root has never said whether the decision to drop James Anderson and Stuart Broad was his, but it seems fair to assume he wouldn’t have been given a team including such a controversial call-up if it weren’t for him. agree with that.

It was a brave and forward-thinking decision, but one that required everything to go well: for Ollie Robinson, unfit for the Ashes, to enter the park; for injury-prone Mark Wood to play three Tests in quick succession; for Chris Woakes, seemingly drained of his love of the game by a long winter, to overturn a poor overseas record.

This did not bear fruit; The English batters again proved their ultimate Achilles heel, but they struggled to take wickets all series. Veterans should think about a dodged bullet.

The performance in Grenada showed that other things still need to change. This is when even a lack of obvious alternatives should be ruled out as a reason for Root to stick around. He’s run out of ideas on how to make his team more than the sum of their small parts.

Root doesn’t see it that way and, in all honesty, his players don’t seem to either. He will have to jump, because there is no one to push him, but he accepts that the new leaders may have very different ideas that he must accept.

Root’s was captain of England’s records, good and bad: most matches (64), most wins (27), most defeats (26), most runs (5,295), most centuries (14).

If this is the end, history is unlikely to remember his captaincy fondly, in part because his last winter and his final test in the job were so disappointing.

Overall, he has failed to win the Ashes, England’s Barometer series, in three attempts or away from home except in Sri Lanka (twice) and South Africa. He’s been prone to tactical wood (although he’s not the first English captain guilty of this – think his predecessor), particularly with his spinners.

There are nuances in this debate, of course. Root has been a superb, smiling ambassador for the sport, almost always leading a mediocre team dotted with top players.

There has been a world-class hitter, himself, a brilliant all-rounder, Ben Stokes, and two great bowlers in the falls of their careers. Beyond that? Inconsistent cricketers, all formats, and a string of county contenders struggling to make the leap. It’s hard to blame him too much.

The timing was unfortunate: he was England’s Test captain in the first era when white-ball cricket was prioritized – sometimes at his team’s expense.

And most damaging, a global pandemic hit just when they seemed to be building something. Nestled in bubbles, things started to go downhill when Root’s superiors opted for a well-meaning but poorly executed rest and rotation policy at the start of a year in which they had to face the three best teams in the game. world. The ridiculous timetable was compressed by the pandemic but still accepted by the ECB.

After that ? It would help if England started looking at the captaincy through a mid-term goal – let’s start with this summer – rather than a five-year term.

After the Ashes, there were no decent contenders to take over – and please, let’s stop with the left-field shouting from outside the team. Rory Burns and Jos Buttler had a falling out. Sam Billings and James Vince might have something to offer this group, but not as captains just yet. Broad is 35 and will only play under certain conditions.

In the Caribbean, Ben Stokes – who is an instinctive leader with a sharp tactical mind – reappeared. With his injury problems easing, he looks fitter and more focused than in Australia.

There are disadvantages; we saw how his cricketer ancestors, Botham and Flintoff, went to work; the mental well-being issues that contributed to his breakup last year won’t magically go away, and he would need a strong support network around him; he already has a huge responsibility, so maybe it would help if he moved back to No.6, his preferred position, where he could reunite with his best reagent.

It’s also worth wondering if the fiercely loyal Stokes would agree to succeed his great friend Root if he were fired. Stokes is not a perfect candidate, nor guaranteed to make things better. But it’s time to give it a hand.