Joe Root on the 15th of April 2022 announced that he will no longer be continuing his role as the Test Captain of the English Men’s Test Cricket Team thus ending a 5 year reign at the helm which started in 2017 when he took over the role from Sir Alastair Cook and now he has said that This was the most challenging decision he has had to make in his career but the recent results have played on his mind and thus he has made the decision to relieve himself of the duties as Test Captain of England.
His overall captaincy record for England in Test Cricket is the best in England history as he has led the test team in a total of 64 Test matches and he has won 27 Test matches out of the 64 matches him the winningest captain in England cricket history and more importantly he enjoyed the trust and had the full team backing him for years and he brought out the best in them. So, let’s look at the overall Test captaincy stint of Joe Root.
The Start of the Joe Root era
Joe Root was handed the reins of Captaincy on 13th February 2017 which makes it 5 years 2 months and 2 days that his England test captaincy passed for. He was the 80th Test captain of England which made him very happy and emotional at the same time. He was committed to take forward the legacy of the former greats of English cricket. And he could not start his captaincy debut in a better way as on 6th July 2017 vs South Africa at Lord’s, Joe Root made 190 runs In his first innings as captain which is the 6th England player to score a century on captaincy debut and his 190 was the highest among the 6. However the 2017-18 Ashes series was a bad chapter in the early captaincy career of Joe Root as the urn came back to Australia by the end of the 3rd Test match and he knew that changes had to be made.
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2018 India series win
This was the defining series win in the reign of Joe Root as the England team was not as strong and a good Indian side were coming to win a series for the first time since 2007. He led the team extremely well in the 5 Test matches and in a series that was difficult for batting his star bowlers James Anderson and Stuart Broad ensured that England won 2 close matches and thus winning the series 4-1. This earned Joe Root a lot of plaudits and his reign was to continue for long.
The Downfall since 2021
Since 2021 the England team was very weak and no other batter other than the Captain himself Joe Root was the only man in form. The gap was so wide that Joe Root scored more than 1700 Test runs last year with 6 centuries and 2 double Hundreds and he loved playing against India as he scored runs both home and away against them. The third highest run scorer for England was extras with over 410 runs for them. And the series that England won in Sri Lanka in the beginning of last year was mainly due to the batting brilliance of the captain as Joe Root scored a 228 and a 186 in the 2 test matches which helped England near Sri Lanka but the series loss to India away and trailing at home and most recently the drubbing that England got at the Ashes and the West Indies series loss had made his reign untenable and he has to resign.
Joe Root Stats as Test Captain
Test Matches Captained | 64 Test Matches |
Test Matches won as Captain | 27 Test Matches |
Test Matches lost as Captain | 26 Test Matches |
Total runs scored as Test Captain | 5295 Runs |
Batting average as Test Captain | 46.45 |
Total centuries as Test Captain | 14 Centuries |
Tosses won as Test Captain | 38 Tosses won |
