XPost: uk.sport.cricket
https://www.espncricinfo.com/story/why-joe-root-is-preparing-for-the-ashes-at-the-2023-ipl-1376044
Preparing for the Ashes by (not) playing in the IPL? For Joe Root, it's
a no-brainer
The former England Test captain has warmed the bench for the majority of
this IPL season, but he has been using the opportunity to learn constantly
Joe Root has played 319 times for England across formats, has captained
his country 64 times, and has scored 18,048 runs in an international
career spanning just over a decade.
But since he arrived in India in late March, he has found himself
surplus to requirements. Root spent the first ten games of IPL 2023 on Rajasthan Royals' bench, a pink towel draped around his neck as he
fulfilled his duties as the world's most overqualified drinks waiter.
It came as no surprise. Only four overseas players are permitted in each
XI. Jos Buttler and Shimron Hetmyer are automatic starters, and Royals
opted to use their other spots on two of Jason Holder, Adam Zampa and
Trent Boult. Yet it still jarred to see one of the leading batters of
his generation acting as 12th man.
In the past week, Root has been tasked with bolstering a hit-and-miss
middle order - but even so, his opportunities have been limited. In his
first two games, he bowled two tight overs and didn't face a ball as
Royals' top order dominated; in his third, he made 10 off 15 balls from
No. 4 as they collapsed to the third-lowest total in IPL history.
Back home, the question being asked more than any other is whether Root
should be in India at all. The first Ashes Test is a month away, and he
has not played a red-ball game since February. Root was sold at base
price - Rs 1 crore (US$ 121,600 approximately) - so the financial aspect
of his participation is almost incidental.
"It's quite easy, really," Root said in Jaipur, when asked how he would
respond to suggestions that he ought to be playing county cricket. "I'll
start by saying I love playing for Yorkshire, and I love the County Championship. It's the bedrock of our game back in the UK and it's so influential in developing players.
"But for where I am within my game and my development, having an
experience like this for the first time at 32 years old, I feel that's
going to benefit me more in the long run than playing four Championship
games where I might not learn too much about myself. Look at the
fixtures: one of them's already been rained out, one was a rain-affected
game and ended up a draw.
"Is that really going to ready me for an Ashes series? Or, by having
these experiences here in India six months out from the World Cup, in
these conditions, speaking to all these players, trying to learn as much
as I can - mainly about T20 cricket, but also having good, strong
conversations about the game in general - are they going to make me a
better player? I think so.
"And I think that I'll come back ready and excited to dive back into
Test cricket and ready for what's going to be an amazing summer of Ashes cricket. It wasn't something that I just did - I thought there was a
real plus side to it, and that if I treated the experience in the right
way then I would come back in a really good place, with more knowledge
and in a better position."
It was just short of a year ago that similar questions were being asked
of Jonny Bairstow, as he warmed up for England's first Test of 2022 by
playing for Punjab Kings. Three months later he had put together one of
the best runs of form in England's Test history, with four hundreds in
six matches.
"If you want to, you can look back at anything and say, 'Well, if you
didn't do that then, you didn't do that, then you might've done better
here,'" Root said. "It doesn't make any difference. It's about how you
turn up and you perform when those big games come around. That's what
you should be judged on.
"Just look at the schedule in general now. There's so much cricket, all
the time. It might have been that [these two months] would've been used
as some time off, and I wouldn't have played a huge amount of cricket.
Most of the game is played upstairs anyway… It was a no-brainer really,
in that respect."
Root has tried to be a "sponge" in India, to "soak up a lot of different information and then try to filter it into my own game". He has spoken
at length with Kumar Sangakkara, his head coach. After Royals' opening
fixture, against Sunrisers Hyderabad, he spent "an hour or so" in the
company of Brian Lara. "It's hard not to come away from that as a better player, really," he said.
It has provided him with a rare chance to immerse himself in a format
that he has barely played in the four years since his most recent T20 international, on the eve of the 2019 World Cup. In that time, he has
played a dozen games in the Vitality Blast, four in the Hundred and five
in the ILT20 - thin gruel compared to the banquet of opportunities
enjoyed by most of his England team-mates.
"For me, when it comes to T20, I just want to play," Root said. "I just
want to be around it. I want to play it. I love the format: I think it's
great and if there are opportunities that aren't going to impede on international cricket - first and foremost that'll always be the most
important thing for me - then absolutely, I'll try to take them.
"I've benefited a huge amount from just being around T20 again. I'm
trying to manage my game better in the format - trying to get a little
bit less erratic, and a bit more thoughtful about how I want to go and construct an innings. You can't be formulaic in it, but you're still
making sure that you're calculated in what you're doing.
"When you're not playing, it can be quite easy to sulk and moan and feel
a little bit sorry for yourself. But at the end of the day, you've got
an opportunity here for eight weeks to better yourself and better your
game. It'd be silly not to use that opportunity, and use the people and
the resources around you."
Root has relished the opportunity to play alongside some international opponents, most notably Yuzvendra Chahal. The pair's dance moves at a
team event went viral at the start of the season. "I learned very
quickly that anything you do here gets captured on camera," he said with
a wry smile. "You have to be very careful."
He has also enjoyed the company of two young team-mates: Dhruv Jurel,
the 22-year-old keeper-batter and Yashasvi Jaiswal, the breakthrough
batter of IPL 2023. "It's just watching them play with that amount of confidence, almost that naivete to the game," he said. "It is so
refreshing. It's something that you almost want to bring back into your
own game when you've played a lot and you're a little bit
battle-hardened and you see the world through a different lens. It's
important to be there for those young guys if they want to bounce ideas
off you."
It is a feeling that Ben Stokes and Brendon McCullum have attempted to
instil in England's Test team over the last 12 months. "They've created
a very good environment for the group to operate in," Root said. "And I
don't just mean that it's relaxed and we're all having a nice time.
"I mean that the conversations the guys are having now are, I think, a
lot more relevant to the success we're having, and the guys are going
out there and playing really smart cricket because of the way we're
talking to one another.
"That's a really exciting place to be. When you look at our batting
group, the majority is in their mid-twenties - or even early twenties -
and have got their Test careers right ahead of them. It's an exciting
time to play in that team. It makes me smile just thinking about what is
coming around the corner."
Up next for Root is a first Ashes series without the England captaincy
since 2015. He felt the pressures of the job over the last three series,
never more so than during the Covid-affected tour in 2021-22, and is
looking forward to the opportunity to "just go and play" this summer.
"I look back at the last [2019] one we had in the UK and it just didn't
feel like it really ran for us," he said. "Although we drew the series,
Jofra [Archer] wasn't available for the first game. Woody [Mark Wood]
was out for the series. Jimmy [Anderson] bowled four overs. We were
potentially half an hour away from winning at Lord's, 20 minutes away
from saving the game at Old Trafford…
"But that's the exciting part of an Ashes series: how close they seem to
go, especially in the UK, and how it can draw some of the best Test
cricket out of the two teams. Everyone seems to be building up nicely
towards it. It's a place that we've probably not been for a while when
it comes to these series.
"We are fully aware Australia are a very good team - you don't get to a
World Test Championship final without being good in all conditions. It
should make for great cricket, and that's what you want to play in. You
want to play in those brilliant Test matches, and to be the one there at
the end, not out, having won the game for your team-mates."
Root had an unusual record against Australia across his three series as captain, making a dozen half-centuries in 15 Tests without converting
any of them into hundreds. He comes into this summer's series off the
back of four centuries and four fifties since returning to the ranks,
and with clarity over how he fits into an ultra-attacking batting line-up.
In New Zealand earlier this year, Root spoke about trying to "find out
what my role is within this team" before hitting 248 runs for once out
in the second Test, in Wellington. He believed that his comments were "misconstrued slightly" but has clearly taken confidence from his
performances in that game.
"I feel I've always had a good understanding of how I want to play," he
said. "How I want to do that alongside the guys at the other end is the
thing that sometimes I was probably getting a little bit carried away
with. After that first Test in New Zealand, I worked it out; in the
second innings, the only person that was going to get me out was myself,
and I did.
"Then I played nicely again in the second Test. Of course, that doesn't guarantee you anything when you move into a new summer or a new game,
but clearly it's nice to have that internal feeling of understanding of
how you're going to operate, and confidence within your own ability and
where you sit within the group."
The morning after our interview, Root caught up with Harry Brook over
coffee before Royals' game against Sunrisers Hyderabad in Jaipur. Root
made his IPL debut that night; Brook was relegated to the bench, after a
string of low scores following his unbeaten hundred against Kolkata
Knight Riders.
"I know him very well from watching him grow up at Yorkshire," Root
said, "and I think this experience will be really good for him. He's
obviously had an incredible year. Within a short space of time, he's had
quite a lot to take in and absorb. He's probably had five years' worth
of experiences in 12 months.
"But he's got the right mentality and mindset to be able to handle that. Although he might not come across as the most eloquent guy that you'll
speak to, he is a very smart man when it comes to cricket. He has a very
good understanding of the game, especially for someone of his age."
Root's advice to Brook? "Ultimately, he just has to go and play the
game. The ball is the same size, the same weight, and that's the only
thing you face. If you can get in that mindset of just playing the ball
- not the occasion, not the man - then you'll be absolutely fine."
It is the same principle that will underpin Root's own shift from an
Indian spring to an Ashes summer.
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