Root won't 'rip up' England's Bazball blueprint

England Test captain Joe Root plans to keep faith with the aggressive ‘Bazball’ tactics used by his predecessor Ben Stokes as he starts his second spell in the role.

Root was appointed as skipper following Stokes’ shock retirement from international duty during England’s Test series defeat to New Zealand in June.

The 35-year-old previously captaining England between 2017 and 2022 and took the role on an interim basis when Stokes was dropped for one Test against New Zealand.

The Yorkshire batsman is planning to tweak the approach of Stokes and Brendon McCullum, who was sacked as England’s Test coach after the New Zealand matches, rather than start from scratch.

Root will lead England in the forthcoming Test series against Pakistan, with former New Zealand captain Stephen Fleming arriving to replace McCullum later this year.

“It’ll be trying to continue some of the good things we have done over that period (since 2022) and not finding ourselves back to where we were before Baz and Ben took over,” Root said in an ECB interview on Saturday.

“Evolving and tweaking things to get us to where we want to be and really competing against the top nations consistently over a long period of time.

“The wrong thing to do would be to completely rip everything up that we’ve done over the last four years.

“There’s so much good stuff that Ben and Brendon did and changed the way we look at the game and see the game.”

McCullum inspired Stokes to make England play with flair and power, but that approach did not work against Australia and India.

England failed to win a Test series against either of their main rivals in the Stokes-McCullum era, a dismal run culminating in an Ashes thrashing in Australia.

That series and England’s recent clash with New Zealand were both marred by issues involving players drinking, with Stokes and Gus Atkinson left out of the second Test against the Black Caps after breaking a team curfew in a nightclub incident.

Root, a more conservative figure than the brash Stokes, plans to be stricter in his time as captain, without indicating if that will include off-field behaviour.

“I’ve benefitted hugely from that as a player so to think we have to start all over again would be wrong. But there are areas we want to sharpen up a little bit and become a little bit sterner with,” he said.

“The last four years is the most fun I’ve had in cricket and most of that is down to the way they got me to see the game.

“Clearly the last little while is fresh in everyone’s minds but you’re looking at a four-year period where we did a lot of good things.”