Kolkata: An easy reading of England’s decision to restore Joe Root as Test captain is that they are finally tired of Bazball. The more interesting reading is that they may have had enough of what Bazball came to represent — permanent acceleration, emotional liberation and the insistence that Test batting should be a perennial declaration of intent.
Root is the most obvious antidote, yet the least straightforward.
When England handed him the captaincy in 2017, Root represented a version of cricket that was almost unfashionable. His captaincy eventually became synonymous with a team that was too cautious, too brittle. Too often it was unable to turn good positions into wins. By the time he resigned in April 2022, he had led England in a record 64 Tests, winning 27 and losing 26. He had also scored 5,295 runs as captain, another England record.
Then came the revolution. Under Ben Stokes and Brendon McCullum, fear was banished, risk rebranded as courage. The point was not necessarily to score rapidly but make opponents uncomfortable, to force the game towards a result and make players believe that failure was an acceptable price in that attacking effort. Root, intriguingly, went along with the theme.
He didn’t turn into Stokes or Ben Duckett, but experimented. The reverse scoop became the visual shorthand for Root’s uncomfortable accommodation with this new world. There were moments when the most technically complete Test batter of his generation seemed to be trying to prove that he too could play the game differently.
Yet the statistics tell a subtler story. Root didn’t need Bazball to become a better batter. In the early McCullum period his strike rate rose without fundamentally altering the architecture of his batting. In 2024, against Sri Lanka, he demonstrated what made him special — an average of 87 in the Bazball era at that point, but with a strike rate of 58.8 — barely above his career rate of 57.5. Even in an environment built around speed, Root’s greatest weapon remained time.
That’s why his return feels less like a restoration than an experiment. England haven’t simply re-appointed their old captain, they have appointed the man who survived their most radical reinvention. One that with time was also looking increasingly predictable. By the 2025-26 Ashes, England’s batting aggression was still there, but the returns had become less compelling. Root’s strike rate fell to 58.3 in that Ashes loss compared to 66.89 in the broader McCullum period. England’s aggressive identity was no longer producing control. And then Stokes retired.
In its aftermath, the revealing decision was not Root’s re-appointment but Harry Brook being overlooked. Brook is 27, an established white-ball captain, and was the designated deputy of Stokes. He is, in many ways, a natural child of the McCullum-Stokes revolution — aggressive without appearing reckless, instinctive, technically inventive and comfortable with the modern game’s rhythms. Yet England chose Root.
That suggests something deeper than succession planning. Maybe England want stability before evolution, something Marcus North — England’s selector — stressed while talking about the significance of Root’s experience. Root isn’t necessarily being asked to kill Bazball, he has been tasked with making it more amenable.
That could be tricky. The players have changed, as has the game. England cannot simply return to 2019 and reinstall Root in his former version. Zak Crawley, Duckett, Brook and the rest have been shaped by four years of liberalised cricket. Their instinct is now part of England’s skill set. Asking them to bat for batting’s sake would be as artificial as asking Root to reverse scoop every second over.
Root himself has changed. He has admitted to being in a “very different place” compared to the one he occupied when he gave up the captaincy. The 35-year-old who walks back into the England dressing room is not the anxious captain who resigned in 2022. With 14,114 runs in 166 Tests, he is the only batter with the mathematical probability of touching Sachin Tendulkar’s record of 200 Tests, and 15,921 runs.
“The last four years have been the most fun I’ve had in professional cricket, and a big part of that was down to the way that they got me to see the game, how I fit into that side, and the experiences that we managed to create on and off the field,” he said. “Clearly, the last little while is probably what’s fresh in everyone’s mind, but you’re looking at a four-year period where we did a lot of amazing things. I’ve taken a lot from that, and I feel it will be a big part of how I want to approach things moving forward as a leader of this team.”
Root has almost always been expected to save the blushes for England. This time though, he may have to be the organiser too. The better version of Root’s England would borrow the best of both eras. That, ultimately, may be why England have returned to him. Not because Root is the opposite of Bazball, but because he has lived through it and discovered that he doesn’t need to choose.