Veteran England batsman\u00a0Joe Root\u00a0has said it would be “silly” to change England’s management team after losing the Ashes, with players “absolutely committed” to the current set-up.<\/p>\n
England meekly surrendered the famous urn after just 11 days of play with back-to-back eight-wicket defeats in Perth and Brisbane and an 82-run loss at Adelaide.<\/p>\n
Their capitulation was compounded by criticism of their low-key preparations and allegations of excessive drinking during a mid-series beach break in Noosa.<\/p>\n
The team restored some pride with a frantic four-wicket win in Melbourne, snapping an 18-match winless streak on Australian soil.<\/p>\n
It relieved pressure on coach Brendon McCullum, skipper Ben Stokes and cricket chief Rob Key, who have all indicated they want to stay in their roles.<\/p>\n
“In terms of the playing group, we’re absolutely committed to the management,” Root, England’s all-time leading Test run-scorer and a former captain, told English media in Melbourne.<\/p>\n
“Yes, we can be better and there are certain areas that we’ll continue to keep working at, but the management work extremely hard.<\/p>\n
“They might do things in a slightly different way, but I think we’ve made great strides as a group and a big reason for it is because of the guys we have behind us.”<\/p>\n
Management’s case to stay on would be strengthened by another win in the fifth Test in Sydney starting Sunday.<\/p>\n
Root was captain on England’s last tour of Australia in 2021-22 when they were crushed 4-0, costing coach Chris Silverwood and cricket director Ashley Giles their jobs.<\/p>\n
But Root said a lot of progress had been made since under the current regime.<\/p>\n
“You look at the group of players we’ve got and you look at the guys that were involved in the team when I was captain, four years ago, and you look at their records individually, and every single one of them has improved as a player,” he said.<\/p>\n
“This team has improved. I think it would be silly (to consider change) for the amount of hard work and things that have been done.”<\/p>\n
Victory in Melbourne was Root’s first in Australia in more than a decade of trying and he said it “would be better if we win next week as well”.<\/p>\n
“If we can build on it and do it again next time it’s momentum in the right direction for the next tour here (in 2029-30),” he added.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Veteran England batsman\u00a0Joe Root\u00a0has said it would be “silly” to change England’s management team after losing the Ashes, with players “absolutely committed” to the current set-up. England meekly surrendered the famous urn after just 11 days of play with back-to-back eight-wicket defeats in Perth and Brisbane and an 82-run loss at Adelaide. Their capitulation was …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":439,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-437","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sport"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pakistantimesusa.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/437","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pakistantimesusa.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pakistantimesusa.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pakistantimesusa.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pakistantimesusa.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=437"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/pakistantimesusa.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/437\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":441,"href":"https:\/\/pakistantimesusa.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/437\/revisions\/441"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pakistantimesusa.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/439"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pakistantimesusa.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=437"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pakistantimesusa.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=437"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pakistantimesusa.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=437"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}