Ashes Whitewash: Root has no way to stop the rot

Ralph Ellis
18 December 2017

Does Joe Root have the answers to England's malaise?

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Australia wrapped up an innings victory to regain the Ashes this morning. Ralph Ellis fears there will be more misery for England still to come.

"The biggest surprise as you go through the fall-out from England losing the Ashes this morning is that the 5-0 series score is 2.265/4 rather than already being odds-on."

At least my dog Hero was happy. For four days he's had to wait for his morning walk until play finished in the Test, wagging his tail in confusion at why his routine was changed.

This morning - well, frankly, after the alarm went off and I checked the score I couldn't be bothered to wait for England's last few batsmen to inevitably follow all the others back to the pavilion. So we set off pretty much straight away.

It wasn't any surprise at all to get back and find the last three wickets had gone in a heartbeat and England had lost by an innings and 41 runs. This is becoming every bit as miserable a series from an England point of view as four years ago.

The only consolation for me was that after the defeat in Adelaide I backed the 5-0 whitewash in the Series Score market at 3.39/4. That isn't going to do more than cover what I lost from my pre-Ashes optimism, but at least it looks a safe bet now.

In fact the biggest surprise as you go through the fall-out from England losing the Ashes this morning is that the 5-0 series score is 2.265/4 rather than already being odds-on. I'm tempted to have a bit more.

It was after the third Test defeat in 2013 that Graeme Swann packed up and went home, the Kevin Pietersen row developed an even more bitter theme behind the scenes, and the whole tour unravelled.

The question you have to wonder this morning is how can Joe Root stop the same sort of thing happening again? With Andrew Strauss back home for understandable family reasons, the whole lot is falling on his shoulders.

He can't lead by example when his own scores with the bat have been so poor. We went to Australia with worries about places 2, 3 and 5 but it's been 1 and 4 that have been the deepest disappointments.

Root, curiously, remains second favourite at 3.185/40 to be England's top series run scorer even though he is averaging just 29.33 and is 126 behind Dawid Malan's total of 302. I think I'd rather back Jonny Bairstow 4.47/2 who has made 241 so far.

Bairstow was unlucky with a ball that kept low on one of the damp patches that had delayed play on the final day after water got under the covers at the WACA in Perth.

But that was as far as you could go in blaming bad luck. England's body language in the field has looked progressively worse as Steve Smith piled on the runs, and that's been reflected in the second innings batting.

The truth is that this series was lost on a night in Bristol before the tour even started. England miss Ben Stokes for his playing ability and for his fighting spirit (on the field). That incident unquestionably had a knock-on effect for morale.

Root is 26-years-old, in his first year as captain, and pretty much everything that could have gone wrong has done. Does he have the leadership skills to hold the tour together, or will too many players now be marking time before they can fly home?

I don't blame my dog for not being bothered about Ashes cricket. I just hope England's players will remain committed.