“If I’m being brutally honest, I’m really hacked off.” – For anyone who needs a Joe Root translation service, that means he’s absolutely f****** furious.
One match into what’s supposed to be his golden second era as England captain, days after overseeing a dominant win at his home ground, Root is dealing with the same kind of crisis he warned his players against a week ago.
Brydon Carse is the latest centrally contracted player filmed by a member of the public during a big night out – joining Harry Brook, Jacob Bethell, Gus Atkinson and Josh Tongue over the last 11 months. Given that Ben Stokes is still an ECB employee, his name can also be added to that list for his supporting role in the Carse video – though no footage emerged of his Rex Room escapades earlier this summer. Matt Potts, also part of the cast outside Molly Malone’s in Derby, can also go on the list.
There’s a weariness to compiling that naughty list. Grown men have the right to get as paralytic as they want, and their most serious crime currently is not being a very good Test side alongside their extra-curriculars. It’s the optics Root has to improve, of a bunch of immature, feckless, and entitled blokes incapable of living up to the status given to them by their millions of fans.
“You always want to represent your country in the best possible light,” Root said last week. “We might have fallen short of that on a few occasions in the recent past. The only [way] to rectify that is to be really good role models, good human beings, and put in really strong performances on the field.”
Brydon Carse has been left out of England’s squad for the second Test against Pakistan while an investigation into an incident in Derby on Saturday night is carried out.
He’s been replaced in the squad by Sonny Baker. pic.twitter.com/Ghn9Xdd2o9
The pivotal point is the way “being a good role model” is acted out. Under Stokes and McCullum, the image of an England cricketer became a crusader, fighting for the future of the game itself with an intensity that built from series to series. In Australia, that intensity became a justification for ‘blowing off steam’ by setting up camp in the bars of Noosa.
Equally, when the balance tipped into a need to tighten the rules over curfews, where players could go and how diligently they had to report their whereabouts, Stokes was compromised in enforcing them. The middle finger Stokes has repeatedly shown to authority over the years, and his own fondness for a big night out, left him open to hypocrisy when implementing standards on others he hasn’t kept to himself. When he asked his players not to venture beyond the team hotel after they lost the Ashes in Adelaide, he wasn’t universally obeyed. The Rex Rooms incident in June, and his presence at Carse’s arrest show the difficulties he had enforcing a cultural change he never really believed in.
Now it’s Root’s turn to try and crack the whip with his quiet disappointment. There was a sense of incredulity behind Root’s press conference addressing the Carse incident, perhaps because “being an adult” as he urged his teammates to be, comes naturally to him.
Beyond his supreme talent, the status Root has in English cricket is born from the bashful way in which he wears his genius. It’s the smile that’s never lost its cheekiness even as the grey flecks in his stubble grow, the hours upon hours he spends in the nets during training sessions, and his reputation for kindness. None of that should be conflated with being ‘boring old Joe’. There’s enough evidence from his Bob Willis impression, which regularly makes it into Sky montages, to his marshalling of the post-win kebab order back in the early days of Bazball – back when their extraordinary on-field feats justified excess off it.
It’s that line Root has trod effortlessly throughout his career that his charges have consistently proved themselves incapable of identifying.
Perhaps, under the leadership of England’s ultimate role model, the rest will become passable ones. There can be little worse for an English cricketer than to draw Joe Root’s disappointment. While Stokes’ leadership encouraged his followers to stick it to the establishment, Root’s power is his own approval. And make no mistake, it will be Root’s approval that matters over Stephen Fleming’s when he comes in. If the aftermath of the Carse incident has proven anything, it’s up to Root to establish a firm hand. The Key-McCullum-Stokes power triumvirate is no more, Root is steering this ship and will continue to do so when Fleming takes up post.
Even when England’s new leadership lineup is complete, Root has to be the one to enforce cultural change. He is the only one with the ability to hold players to a standard he’s spent his entire career setting. Because if there’s one thing worse than waking up after a night out to see videos of yourself you can barely remember, it’s having to explain yourself to Joe Root while still hungover.
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