England has failed to clinch a Test series win in its latest tour of West Indies, losing the series 0-1. As a result, ex-England captains demanded that Joe Root step down as the Test skipper.
It has been a disastrous run for England in the longest format of the game of late. On Sunday, it lost the final Test against the Windies by ten wickets at the National Cricket Stadium in St George's, Grenada, thus losing the three-Test series 0-1. Notably, Joe Root and his men have sunk to the bottom of the ongoing ICC World Test Championship table, with chances of them making it to the final looking slim.
While calls have been made for Joe Root to step down as England's Test skipper, he wishes to continue. "I think I've made it quite clear at the start of this game, and throughout this tour, I'm very passionate about taking this team forward. I don't think it's ever in your hands completely, but as I said, I feel like the group are very much behind me. We're doing a lot of remarkable things. We need to turn that into results," he told BT Sport on Sunday, following the defeat.
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However, some of the ex-English skippers are not convinced by Root and demand that he step down for the better good. In his column for Times, Michael Atherton wrote, "Root's captaincy is untenable, and he must surely know it deep down. His team have now gone five series without victory and have only won one Test in the past 17, a shocking run for a team so well resourced."
On the other hand, Nasser Hussain wrote in The Daily Mail, "Root is a world-class batsman and a very likeable lad, but I feel he has never had that instinctive feel for the game as captain. Clearly, under Joe and Paul Collingwood in the West Indies, England tried to create this atmosphere where they were all mates and all in it together. They want to be a likeable team, but you need more than that to win Tests."
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In the meantime, Ashes-winning skipper Michael Vaughan penned for The Daily Telegraph, "It happened in Grenada, it happened endlessly in Australia and many times last summer. It has been a consistent trend that when England have been put under pressure on Joe's watch, they have not been able to cope. When they have to win an hour, they lose it."
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