Joe Root says the England players are “absolutely committed” to the team’s management and it would be “silly” to make changes following the Ashes series defeat.<\/p>\n
Captain Ben Stokes, head coach Brendon McCullum and director of cricket Rob Key have all come under pressure after the series in Australia was lost with defeats in the first three Tests.<\/p>\n
But England won the fourth Test – a two-dayer in Melbourne – to end an 18-match winless streak down under dating back to 2011.<\/p>\n
All of Stokes, McCullum and Key have expressed a desire to stay on after the Ashes and their cases would be strengthened by another win in the fifth Test in Sydney, starting next Sunday (23:30 GMT, Saturday).<\/p>\n
“In terms of the playing group, we’re absolutely committed to the management,” said batter Root, England’s all-time leading Test run-scorer.<\/p>\n
“Yes, we can be better and there are certain areas that we’ll continue to keep working at, but that management work extremely hard.<\/p>\n
“They might do things in a slightly different way, but I think we’ve made great strides as a group and a big reason for it is because of the guys we have behind us.”<\/p>\n
Root was captain on England’s last tour of Australia, a 4-0 defeat in 2021-22. The tour cost coach Chris Silverwood and director of cricket Ashley Giles their jobs, while Root would later resign.<\/p>\n
Stokes, McCullum and Key all came in for the summer of 2022 and initially revitalised the Test team. McCullum was handed a contract extension until 2027, including taking charge of the white-ball teams in 2024.<\/p>\n
Stokes aligned his England deal to the same time period just before this Ashes series.<\/p>\n
While all-rounder Stokes would probably remain captain after the Ashes if fitness permits, the futures of McCullum and Key will come in for scrutiny \u2013 a situation complicated by a T20 World Cup in India and Sri Lanka early next year.<\/p>\n
The coach and director of cricket do not only have to answer for England’s results, but also their planning, preparation and off-field activities.<\/p>\n
Key said he would investigate reports of excessive drinking on England’s break from the Ashes in Noosa between the second and third Test, while he also apologised for what he said was a “20%” performance in the series.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Joe Root says the England players are “absolutely committed” to the team’s management and it would be “silly”…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":376181,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[43,44,41,39,42,40],"class_list":{"0":"post-376180","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/376180","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=376180"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/376180\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/376181"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=376180"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=376180"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=376180"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}