sussexpob wrote:Not sure I would setup a team based on apparent failure of those around Root. We did that for years, and all we did was pick negative players who didnt have the capacity to play top level scoring. When England lose, Roots SR is in the 70s. That probably says a lot, if people fail and he plays an anchor innings, we lose anyway. And without looking at all those games to get a feel of it, that is probably the most positive interpretation. A more obvious conclusion would be that when Roots slightly inferior scoring ability comes to the fore, England lose.
Except England don't lose very much these days. Root's SR in England wins is over 90, and 8 of his 11 ODI hundreds have come at better than a run a ball. His average in England wins is 64. He also has 8 player of the match awards - of the current England side, only Morgan has more.
I looked at Root's 4 hundreds in defeat. 3 of them came at better than a run a ball, and generally what happened was that the lower order failed to kick on at all and England crumbled from a decent position to set a sub-par total, and were 8-10 wickets down at the end, suggesting that they wouldn't have scored any more if Root hadn't been there.
Maybe you could argue that Root should have batted faster in this game and England would have got over the line
http://www.espncricinfo.com/series/1088 ... z-2017-18/
But I think it's pretty harsh to blame him when none of numbers 4-9 scored more than 11. Plus it took a superhuman batting effort from Taylor to beat England that day, and England nearly won. Just as likely if Root hadn't been there scoring 'slowly', England would have slumped to 270 all out.
It's more accurate to say that when the top order fails AND Root fails, England lose. In the last two years, that hasn't happened very much.