England head coach Brendon McCullum has backed star batter Joe Root despite his struggles in the ongoing Test series against India with the bat. However, the former England captain has been under the scanner for some of his dismissals, the latest being an attempted reverse sweep to Jasprit Bumrah that cost him his wicket as well. However, in six innings in the Test series so far, Joe Root has hit just 77 runs.
On BBC’s Test Match Special Podcast, Brendon McCullum said: “People see a shot like that and go, ‘Joe Root is struggling to deal with this new regime’. His impact on the game is still very, very significant. Imagine if this becomes the norm for Joe as well, with the talent he possesses and the history he’s got. Then what’s the ceiling? Do we want just a normal Joe Root, or do we want an even better Joe Root? How many games are we going to win if that happens.”
On this, McCullum stated: “We’ve still got some progress to make and some things to improve on, but we’re a better team now than we were 18 months ago. We’re obviously not totally screwed down on the method yet. There will be times when we don’t quite get it right because it’s a hard way to play. It’s asking guys to take the game on and sometimes we have to deal with failure.”
Meanwhile, Brendon McCullum said that his team had no regrets about their approach despite being lost to India in the third Test of the ongoing series in Rajkot. England lost the game by 434 runs.
“People are entitled to their opinion, good, bad or ugly. It’s up to us whether we want to listen to it or not. The dressing room is a very strong place where confidence is high and guys are backed to go out there and allow their talent to flourish. If we allow the outside noise to seep in, that’s our problem,” Brendon McCullum concluded. “We won the first one here when halfway through the Test no-one would have given us a chance, then we lost the next two. I’m pretty excited about the next two. If we bounce back from this then we’ll know this team is starting to get where we want it to get to. Too right we can win the series.”
