• England’s Test skipper, Joe Root is having a dream run with the bat as he has been scoring runs across formats. However, England recently lost the Ashes series to Australia 0-4 when he took the responsibility of captaincy after the former captain Alistair Cook resigned from the post.

Root is currently playing the Gillette ODI series against the Aussies. The Englishmen have already won the series 3-0 with two more matches to go. He did well in the ODI series so far and was dismissed only once in the three matches. He also came handy with the ball with some impressive off-spin bowling and scalped crucial wickets as well.

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However, Root will be missing out in the T20 tri-series to be played by England alongside Australia and New Zealand which gets underway from the 7th of February. He is unwillingly missing the T20s against Australia and New Zealand and said he can understand why the decision will be questioned. He also acknowledged the fact that he felt uncomfortable missing out for England in order to play in the IPL.

While trying to explain his decision, Root said, “I hate missing games of cricket for England. It is something that doesn’t really sit well with me either. It was a long, hard decision that I and Trevor had to come to.”

Both him and coach Trevor Bayliss had to come to an agreement to manage his workload. Earlier, Joe wanted to play both the IPL as well as the tri-series. He has never played in an overseas league and his Twenty20 experience is restricted to England and Yorkshire.

 Also read: Smith praises Root

Talking about the same, Root added, “You look at the amount of cricket that we have got coming up and the opportunity that the IPL brings and you almost have to look at it as more of an investment for my game and for all the England team moving forward.If being involved in that block of cricket, with everything that tournament brings, is going to add more to my game for the next four or five years then missing a few games here might be worthwhile.”

Speaking of the financial factors and the experience, the Englishman said, “Of course, there is a money side to it, there is no point lying about it. That is obviously a benefit of playing in the IPL but that is not why I went into the auction. I really believe playing a block of Twenty20 cricket with that scrutiny, being under pressure for long periods of time against the world’s players in that format would be a great opportunity to develop and learn my white-ball game”.