England batter Joe Root hailed Rohit Sharma and Virat Kohli terming the duo as greats of the modern era. He also expressed the desire to keep the Indian skipper quiet in the ongoing five-match Test series. The series is levelled 1-1 after the first two Test matches, as India made a brilliant comeback at Vishakhapatnam.
Virat Kohli opted out of the first two Test matches of the series. It is uncertain whether he will join the squad for the remaining matches. On the other hand, Rohit Sharma hasn’t managed to make much of an impact so far in the two matches. He has failed to score a single fifty in the four innings, scoring just 90 runs, with a high score of 39.
Speaking to Sports18, Joe Root expressed that Virat Kohli and Rohit Sharma have a big role to play for India in the red-ball format. He also added that they would want to dismiss the senior players as early as possible. Joe Root said,
“You mentioned two of the greats of the modern era. Of course, there’s going to be focus. We know how good they are and they are also very senior within this current Indian batting lineup. So clearly they’ve got a big role to play within this Test team. You want to make sure that you try and get on top of them early. They can get big scores and we’ve been on the wrong end of that a few times, so it would be nice to try and keep them as quiet as we can throughout the series.”
We don’t really do team meetings anymore: Joe Root on England’s Bazball culture
England batter Joe Root also opened up on the team’s ‘Bazball’ culture under Ben Stokes’ captaincy with Brendon McCullum as the head coach. The ultra-attacking approach has made England a force to reckon with in Test cricket. Root expressed that the shift in mindset is also visible as they prefer organic conversations and not the team meetings culture. He said,
“We don’t really do team meetings anymore. That’s one of the great things about how we do all of our conversations away from the game and just that enjoyment and buzz about spending time with each other. We don’t have to sit in a meeting room and I think it’s more authentic and more genuine when you can have it around a dinner table. Having a coffee in the morning or whatever, I think that’s when you do your best learning.”
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