England won the first game of their last Test series, against New Zealand at Lord’s, but between that match and the second Ben Stokes and Gus Atkinson were involved in a headline-grabbing incident at a London nightclub. “I’m angry, frustrated at having to sit here and talk through this,” Rob Key said a couple of days later.
“I feel disappointed that I’m here talking about this because there’s so much we’ve tried to do, so much we’ve tried to learn from, and I believe that as a team, the way they’ve carried themselves in the lead‑up to last week’s game, the way they played that Test match – to then be now talking about this, is just incredibly frustrating.”
England won the first game of this Test series, against Pakistan at Headingley, but between that match and the second Brydon Carse was involved in a headline‑grabbing incident at a Derby nightclub. “If I’m being brutally honest, I’m really hacked off. I’m really disappointed that after last week’s performance we’re sat here talking about something not related to it at all,” Joe Root said a couple of days later.
“I look at all of the great things we did in that game – I thought the bowlers were outstanding, with the bat there were a couple of times we found ourselves under pressure and we worked our way through it. Every time we sit here and we’re talking about something off the field it’s really frustrating.”
Two months and four days separated the two press conferences, a period in which a great deal changed for this team – the New Zealand series was lost, as was a coach and a captain – but also, it seems, nothing at all. So the frustration expressed by both Key and Root is also being felt, for different reasons, by those who have had to listen to them. Graham Gooch once famously asked Ian Botham, as it happens after a Test against Pakistan at Lord’s, where the teams will be reunited on Thursday: “Who writes your scripts?” Whoever is scripting the latest series of the soap opera needs to do a bit less recycling and get some fresh ideas.
Root suggests that this is now guaranteed, given that since the squad reassembled in London he has led them through “conversations about what is expected from this group of players, what it means to play for England, what it takes to play for England … a very robust discussion about where we currently sit”. The players now know the standards of behaviour expected from them on and off the field. “I think there’s real clarity there, and now the guys can concentrate on focusing on what is important this week, and making sure we prepare properly and diligently for all the challenges that this surface and Pakistan are going to provide.”
It is not just bewildering but damning that after Harry Brook’s run‑in with a bouncer in Wellington, after the first Ashes Test was followed by a squad‑break‑cum-stag-do in the Queensland beach resort of Noosa, after the then Test head coach Brendon McCullum promised to “use a firm grip to ensure that we are not making those same mistakes again”, and after Stokes’s and Atkinson’s night at Chelsea’s Rex Rooms, this was a job that still needed doing.
Key, managing director of the England men’s side, was all smiles in the Lord’s sunshine as he watched the team train on Tuesday, apparently not feeling the sense of profound personal humiliation that the need for Root to lead a “robust discussion” might reasonably have provoked. “I don’t think it has to be rocket science,” Root said of a task that a succession of people older and more experienced than him have evidently bungled, if they attempted it at all. “It’s being clear what your responsibilities are as a player and then delivering on that time and time again.”
More than 15 years after his Test debut, and with Stephen Fleming about to become the eighth interim or permanent coach under whom he has played, Root has certainly been through periods when the team had that clarity. But he would not be drawn on when, and under whom, it had been lost. “I don’t want to get caught up in digging up what’s happened before. My concern is what happens moving from this point,” he said.
“It’s not something you want to forget about in a week’s time, or six months’ time. This is something that we want to live and breathe every day and that’s what my focus is on. I don’t think it’s going to be helpful talking about what happened in that last period.”
Root used the word “proud” a dozen times during his remarks to the press, and it is an emotion everyone associated with this team will want to enjoy with greater regularity. “I don’t know how long I’m going to play Test cricket for,” he said.
“It sounds a bit of a cliche, but you want to leave the dressing room in a better place than where you found it. Well, this is the opportunity that lies ahead and we have to start acting on that straight away.”
