Be Your Own Man, Joe, If You Land the Captaincy

We don’t know if Joe Root is the right man to captain England – so says Paul Farbrace, England’s assistant coach, as if this was some kind of cosmic revelation rather than an utterance of the bleedin’ obvious.

Of course we don’t know, but given Root has been made Test vice-captain we have a jolly good idea that barring a social faux pas of the Donald Trump kind, he will succeed Alastair Cook when time is eventually called on the latter’s leadership.

Farbrace knows Root from his times as Yorkshire coach and it is possible that something may have stuck with him that makes him uneasy about the appointment. Far more likely is that he does not want to be seen siding with Root while Cook is still in situ.

Anyway, players change and Root, who has worked his way to becoming England’s best all-round batsman, has come a long way from the lippy tyro that David Warner thumped in a Birmingham night club four years ago.

More than in any other sport there is a stereotype of how an England cricket captain should be. In recent times, Andrew Strauss would have fitted the template best. His natural authority, coupled with a decent record and a well-spoken competency with the media, saw him respected if not universally admired. After all, he had his run-ins with Kevin Pietersen.

Yet, like Cook, he fitted the bill in respect to what Giles Clarke, the then chairman of ECB, referred to as: “Very much the type of people we want the England captain and his family to be.”

That criterion apart, Cook, a former chorister at St Paul’s Cathedral, became Strauss’ successor rather in the manner that Michael Atherton became England captain after Graham Gooch – that there were few credible alternatives.