England will be looking to get their Test return back to winning ways as they prepare for the second Test against the West Indies to be played at Manchester. The home side lost the first match soundly, after a spirited West Indies team led by Jason Holder out batted and out bowled them.
However, a positive boost to the England team will come as regular captain Joe Root will join the squad after the birth of his second child, which caused him to miss the first Test in Southampton. He will be replacing Joe Denly in the playing XI as Zak Crawley showed he is the coming man in the first Test.
Root last played a competitive match which was a warm-up tie in Sri Lanka before everything stopped due to the Coronavirus. He returned to practice in nets, but no doubt he would be rusty.
"I'm really looking forward to it. It has been a long time since that warm-up game in Sri Lanka and I feel like I've managed to get some really good stuff out of this break. I've had a bit of time to take stock and look at my game and think of areas that I want to get absolutely right,” Root said.
He further added, “I'm very happy with where my game is at and I just want to go out there and test it for myself. I feel like I'm ready to go out and perform and I'm in a position to score big runs. That is an exciting time for me.”
“If I'm being honest, where I've been fighting my game a bit. I've not been quite myself and at my fluent best. I'd lost a bit of rhythm at times and I now feel like I've turned a corner with that and to get right back to my best it will just take a couple of balls to click in over this week. I really want to go out and score those match-winning hundreds again," Root mentioned.
Missing the first Test against West Indies brought an end to 77 straight Test appearances for Root, who was last dropped for the final Test of the 2013 Ashes series. It was a far happier reason for him missing last week's game, of course.
"The first time with [his eldest child] Alfie I had two days at home and had to fly to India. It was five or six weeks before I saw them again so to have that time at home is something I'll savour for the rest of my life and really appreciate,” Root said.
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"It is an exciting period for English cricket in terms of fast bowling and I think one thing we have to be very smart with is making sure we don't blow them out. We need to get the balance right, especially in this period with so many back to back matches, they need to be well looked after and we get that right. We want them to be as potent as possible but we don't want to put guys out of selection for a long time,” Root said about England’s fast bowling potentials.
Root also opined on Jos Buttler’s future in Tests given that he was out for just nine in the second innings and is averaging less than 20 in his last six Test matches. In 42 Tests Buttler has yielded one hundred and an average of 31.46.
"He's a big part of our group, has been for a long time and is a great thinker about the game. He's a big senior player in the dressing room across the formats and I just feel he's not far away from grabbing Test cricket and really running with it. It's just a matter of time before we see some of those special innings we've seen in white-ball cricket. His performances can transfer across,” Root was supportive of Buttler.
(Cricbuzz.com inputs)
