Live Score
ICC Ranking
Cricket Teams
Cricket Players'The perfect storm of coming together': Joe Root breaks silence on England's white-ball slump
England lost their ODI and T20I series at home to India and have started off their ODI series against South Africa with a loss as well.
England maybe flying high in Test cricket after the appointment of Brendon McCullum as head coach and Ben Stokes as captain but it has been quite a different story in white-ball cricket in recent months. England, who are the holders of the ODI World Cup, have been the team to beat in limited overs cricket for much of the last six years but recently slumped to defeats to India and South Africa at home.
Eoin Morgan, who led England's revolution in white-ball cricket, recently retired from the international sport and his successor, Jos Buttler, has won just two of the seven matches he has played as the team's captain. They lost both the ODI and T20I series to India 2-1 and started with a loss in their three-match ODI series against South Africa.
England's former Test captain Joe Root, who made his comeback to white ball cricket after over a year during the ODI series against India, said that it was a combination of a number of factors that has led to the team experiencing this slump. “It’s like the perfect storm of everything coming together. And when it doesn’t go well it’s really important that you stay strong, you stick to how you want to approach things as a group, and you fully believe it and back it. We’ve shown that we can do that before and I’m very confident we’ll be doing that again in the near future,” Root is quoted as saying by The Guardian.
England are suffering from a plethora of injuries with the likes of Jofra Archer, Chris Woakes and Mark Wood among several players out with long-term injuries. Additionally they have lost Morgan, who remained a vital cog in the batting lineup before his recent slump in form leading up to his retirement, and all-rounder Stokes, who retired from ODI cricket after the first match against South Africa.
"There’s still a lot of players that aren’t available for selection at the minute through injury. And in the last series, you didn’t have big senior players step up with performances, like myself," said Root.
Root backed Buttler to be successful as captain. "I know Jos has got a great cricket mind, he understands this game brilliantly. He’s going to be a great captain. I don’t think these results are a fair reflection on the way that he’s going about his business as a leader. Sometimes it does take time for things to bed in. I don’t think it will take that long with Jos," he said.
