Ashes 2021-22: All the analysis from the Boxing Day Test

Feared Australian sides have ground the best and worst captains to dust. Robert Craddock recalls the past leaders who have suffered a similar fate to Joe Root.

Australian cricket teams at their best are feared and notorious captain killers.

The reputation was forged in the 1990s and early 2000s, vanished in the past decade but has suddenly reappeared to stalk England’s decorated but suddenly desperate Joe Root this tour.

Root’s 59 Test leadership of England hangs by a withering thread despite his brilliant personal form which has him leading a double life.

In recent decades, Pakistan’s Wasim Akram, England’s Andrew Flintoff, Alec Stewart, and Graham Gooch, India’s Sachin Tendulkar and the West Indies Jimmy Adams and Richie Richardson all had their leadership careers punctured or brutally truncated by some rough treatment by ruthless Australian teams.

Catch every moment of The Ashes live and ad-break free during play on Kayo. New to Kayo? Try 14-days free now.

Joe Root’s captaincy is hanging by a thread. Picture: Daniel Pockett/Getty Images

Most of it happened on Australian shores where harsh outfields, vocal crowds, flat decks and a hot sun combined to grind the best and worst of them to dust.

Hard though he tries and honourably though he is performing as a batsman, you could feel Root being gang tackled by these elements as he walked off the MCG in a state of fury with himself after wafting aimlessly and edging Mitchell Starc.

The grinding pressure that makes visiting captain’s lids pop off their saucepans was there for all to see.

Aware his favourite shot – the off-side glide – had also become his poison this tour, Root brought a fourth stump into the nets this week, grooving his game to leave anything on that line … so then, like a greyhound who cannot resist a lure, he nibbled at one on an seventh stump line and edges behind.

That’s what the furnace of an Ashes tour can do to you.

Root said before this tour his captaincy legacy would be defined by whether he could win the Ashes for the first time as his third attempt at skipper.

This sentient would have flared again when he woke on Sunday to the news that fellow former English captain Ray Illingworth – like Root a Yorkshireman – had died of cancer age 89.

Illingworth drew lifelong recognition for leading England to victory in Australia in 1970-71. If he did nothing else in his career it didn’t matter. He took down Australia in Australia, an honour Root seems certain to be denied.

Root walked off furious after his dismissal. Picture: Michael Klein.

Picture: Michael Klein.

Captaincy is a brutal business when a man doesn’t always get what he deserves.

Root has had the best batting year ever by an Englishman this year. He has scored half centuries in all three Ashes Tests.

And yet it’s hard not to think this tour will spell the end of his captaincy if this Test goes the way expected.

When Ashes tours go bad the captaincy become a brutal business.

In 2006-07 Andrew Flintoff admitted he hit the bottle to escape from the pressures of a 5-0 routing.

Flintoff told his father he simply could not keep playing and was having trouble getting out of bed. He was never the same player again.

You don’t have to be a captain to feel the pressure. Jonathan Trott withdrew from the tour midway through the first Test at the Gabba in 2013 after Mitchell Johnson terrorised England’s top order.

With typical self-taunting humour, English spinner Phil Tufnell tells the incredible story of the night he was effectively frogmarched to a Perth psychiatric ward in 1994 but it was no laughing matter at the time.

Tufnell had suffered a hotel room breakdown triggered by relationship problems.

When a psychiatrist asked “tell me about your childhood’’ Tufnell decided it was time to bail.

He jogged out the hospital’s front door, hailed a cab (the driver said “g’day Tuffers, fancy meeting you’’) and returned to the hotel where he met Mike Atherton and Graham Gooch.

As they were discussing his future, Tufnell, still wearing his hospital gown which exposed the crack in his backside when he bent over, lit a cigarette and dismissively remarked “Lads … can we just move on?’’

So he and they did and he played the next day.

Andrew Flintoff was never the same after the 2006/07 Ashes whitewash.

CAPTAIN'S CURSE

The damage Australia caused to team leadership structures during recent decades claimed some big names.
ANDREW FLINTOFF (England): Lost 5-0 to Australia here in 2006-07 and lost the plot off the field with the occasionally boozy late night session causing extreme anguish to team management. Never captained England again.
ALASTAIR COOK (England): Lost 5-0 at the helm in Australia in 2013 but held his place despite the fact that the English cricket system was restructured around him with more than 20 players and officials losing their jobs in the wake of Mitchell Johnson’s havoc-wreaking summer.
JIMMY ADAMS (West Indies): The Windies 5-0 loss to Australia in 2000-01 ended his international career as a player and consequently a captain.
ALEC STEWART (England): Never captained England again in a full series after a 3-1 trouncing by Australia in Australia in 1998-99.
SACHIN TENDULKAR (India): Struggled badly as a leader in Australia in 2000-01 and with baffling field placements and negative tactics and lasted only one more series – against South Africa – before standing down.
WASIM AKRAM (Pakistan): Never captained Pakistan again after losing 3-0 to Australia in 1999-2000 when he confronted a great Australian team in their prime.
RICHIE RICHARDSON (West Indies): His captaincy career was doomed from the moment he surrendered the Frank Worrell Trophy to Australia on West Indies soil with a 1-3 loss in 1995. He lasted one more series as Test skipper, against England, before being replaced.

Why Root must follow in Little Master’s footsteps

— Sam Landsberger

Sachin Tendulkar stepped out of the driver’s seat to pilot what he regards as his greatest innings – and 17 years later it is time Joe Root took a leaf out of that playbook of leaves.

Ajit Tendulkar challenged his younger brother to put away the cover drive and not get out at the SCG after his disastrous start to the 2003-04 series.

The little master drove Australia mad with 241 not out and 60 not out to spoil Steve Waugh’s farewell Test.

Tendulkar’s wagon wheel showed he didn’t play a single cover-drive or a shot on the full outside off stump in 613 minutes of supreme discipline in that first innings.

Sachin Tendulkar celebrates his double ton against Australia in 2004.

England coach Chris Silverwood made his players watch replays of their soft dismissals after the 275-run loss at Adelaide Oval, but perhaps Root and his mates would learn more from reliving Tendulkar’s heroics.

Or perhaps Billy Root should call younger brother Joe with that same challenge.

Root nicked off for 50 on Boxing Day by attempting a back-foot punch that unlocks plenty of runs in England, but does little more than feed the slips catchers in Australia.

Root steered a Mitchell Starc ball to wicket-keeper Alex Carey instead of behind point when the delivery was simply too full to cut.

Root tried to play a shot 42 times from his first 43 balls after spending the week talking about the importance of trusting the bounce on Australian pitches and value of leaving the ball.

But apparently the plan to leave balls was left in the dressing room.

Victorian coach and ex-Test opener Chris Rogers said Root’s proactivity was required against Pat Cummins, Scott Boland and Cameron Green.

But not against Starc.

“You know he’s going to give you bad balls so you don’t have to chase,” Rogers said.

It was a faultless 50 before the brain fade and Root’s wild frustration as he exited the MCG said it all. The Yorkshire boy plays late, plays straight and is a true great.

But Root now has nine half-centuries and no centuries down under. Much like Port Adelaide in AFL finals, he can’t convert.

The skipper required 109 runs in the second innings at the MCG to mow down Viv Richards (1710) and Mohammed Yousef (1788) for the most runs in a calendar year.

This may be the most inept English batting team to tour our shores. Take out Root and you’re left with a group that doesn’t have a player averaging 37.

Little wonder they’re being knocked over like pins in a bowling alley.

Tendulkar was a man with a plan.

“They were bowling consistently outside the off stump and I decided to leave all those balls,” he once said of that disciplined knock.

“Then they had to bowl to me and I used the pace of the ball. I would put this innings right at the top of my hundreds.”

Originally published as Ashes 2021-22: All the analysis from the Boxing Day Test