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Feel Sorry For Joe Root: Alastair Cook Lashes Out at ECB’s Rest And Rotation Policy
Alastair Cook feels sorry for Test skipper Root for not having the best players available in the recent Test series.
22 June 2021 • 4:56 PM
Feel Sorry For Joe Root: Alastair Cook Lashes Out at ECB's Rest And Rotation Policy (Credit: IANS)
New Delhi: Former captain Alastair Cook lashed out at the England and Wales Cricket Board on the Test team selection in the past couple of series. England have rested some crucial players during the two-match Test series against New Zealand while some of them also missed some red-ball matches versus India earlier this year.
Cook said that the decisions were taken correctly in the recent past by the cricket board as Eoin Morgan got a full-strength squad for the T20I series while Joe Root suffered due to a lack of key players.
The veteran cricketer further said that England were in a good position earlier this year but the rotation policy has hurt them.
“Clearly it was disappointing. England have got themselves in a tough situation for the winter. It was going so well, winning in Sri Lanka and then they’re 1-0 up against India,” Cook told ESPNCricinfo.
“To then rest and rotate players, ever since that moment they’ve ended up chasing their tail – ending up with a fifth-choice wicketkeeper (James Bracey), an unbalanced side even though people were playing the (T20) Blast,” said Cook.
Cook further said that the board are trying to make the right decisions but they are not working in the team’s favour.
“You’ve got a Test captain who hasn’t been able to play his best side, yet we seem to be playing a full-strength side in the T20s against Sri Lanka. The decisions don’t look like they’ve been made correctly. Of course, they’re trying their best to make the right decisions for the right reasons, but when you’re playing for England, you get judged on end results most of the time, so you’d have to say it hasn’t worked,” he added.
The 36-year-old feels sorry for Test skipper Root for not having the best players available in the recent Test series.
“I genuinely feel sorry for Joe Root because he hasn’t had his best players available. You can’t buy that experience of guys like Ben Stokes, Jos Buttler, Jonny Bairstow, Moeen Ali. Those kind of players make a big difference. When you look at it in isolation, it doesn’t make that much sense what happened, but how they got there you can kind of half understand. It’s been a tough one, and they just got found out against a better team in that New Zealand series,” said Cook.