The final night was Harry Brook’s but Joe Root still took the series, as he usually does in Sri Lanka. It was here that he began his stratospheric run against the red ball, a double hundred at Galle in 2021 the first of 24 Test tons in the next five years. Go back to 2014, his first visit to the country with England, and there’s an unbeaten 50-over century in Pallekele, a trick he repeated on Tuesday in Colombo.
As Root and Brook sat on the Premadasa outfield after England’s 53-run win in the deciding one-day international, it was the former’s shirt that one supporter repeatedly pleaded for from the stands, never mind what the captain had just done. Local admiration is expected when the 35-year-old has never left a tour of Sri Lanka without at least one match winning knock.
“I’ve found a good method to manage these surfaces,” Root said in his understated closing remarks for the series, having finished with 247 runs in three innings. The reverse sweeps were a standout in the third one-dayer, his general timing the clincher in the second when even Brook struggled for clean contact. A collapse followed his dismissal for 61 in the first. Chuck in a couple of wickets with his off-breaks, even if they were tailenders at the death, and the numbers get prettier.
But that’s it for the winter. As has been the case for nearly seven years now, Root is not part of England T20 team, out of the reckoning as they begin a three-match series in Pallekele on Friday before moving to India next week for the World Cup. Was he ever under consideration for the tournament? “Probably not, no,” Brook said on Tuesday evening. “He’s obviously such a phenomenal player, in all conditions, he’s done it everywhere. Unfortunately he wasn’t quite in the mix.”
Minutes later, Root added: “I’m quite aware of where I probably sit within the international team in that format. I don’t think I’ll give that up, but I know I’m a long way off it. That’s part and parcel of the game. Those guys fully deserve to be ahead of me, they’re an incredible group of players.”
He is right on that last count. It’s a batting lineup possessing three of the top five that played in the victorious 2022 final against Pakistan. There’s strong experience in India – Phil Salt and Jos Buttler have been particularly brilliant in recent IPL seasons – and the achievement of breaching 300 against South Africa last summer.
But there’s always room for nuance in a major tournament, and power is not everything. Men’s T20 World Cup finals are not range-hitting contests; no side has ever reached 180. When England defeated Pakistan in Melbourne a little over three years ago, they were grateful for Ben Stokes’s 49-ball 52, keeping his nerve to see things through.
Test captain Ben Stokes will join the England Lions coaching team in the United Arab Emirates next month. Stokes is currently recovering from an adductor injury suffered in the fifth Ashes Test in Australia earlier this month.
But the 34-year-old will be part of Andrew Flintoff's coaching staff for T20 and 50-over white-ball series against Pakistan Shaheens and continue his rehabilitation work in the UAE.
The coaching team - which will attend either all or part of the tour - also includes Neil McKenzie, Sarah Taylor, Neil Killeen, Moeen Ali and Amar Rashid, while it will be Troy Cooley's first tour since returning to the England and Wales Cricket Board as men's elite national pace bowling lead.
Spinner Moeen joins the Lions for the first time as a coach, while Jordan Cox and Dan Mousley will captain the respective T20 and 50-over squads.
The Lions will play a three-match T20 series and five 50-over matches, their first away white-ball series since visiting Sri Lanka in 2022.
Lions T20 squad: J Cox (Essex, capt), S Baker (Hampshire), L Benkenstein (Essex), J Coles (Sussex), S Cook (Essex), S Currie (Hampshire), C Harrison (Northamptonshire), E Jack (Hampshire), S Mahmood (Lancashire), B McKinney (Durham), T Moores (Nottinghamshire), D Mousley (Warwickshire), M Revis (Yorkshire), W Smeed (Somerset), N Sowter (Durham), M Stanley (Lancashire), A Tribe (Glamorgan).
Lions 50-over squad: D Mousley (Warwickshire, capt), S Baker (Hampshire), L Benkenstein (Essex), S Cook (Essex), J Coles (Sussex), S Currie (Hampshire), C Harrison (Northamptonshire), E Jack (Hampshire), B McKinney (Durham), L Patterson-White (Nottinghamshire), M Potts (Durham), M Revis (Yorkshire), J Rew (Somerset), M Stanley (Lancashire), A Tribe (Glamorgan), J Wharton (Yorkshire).
Root knows the situation well. His 33-ball half-century threatened to be the winning knock of the 2016 final against West Indies in Kolkata until Carlos Brathwaite intervened in the final moments. Even as limits continue to expand in the 20-over game, there is space for an anchor when everything is on the line. Root fits the part, there as the nerveless nurdler for the backend of the tournament and the 150-something chase.
Perhaps he could have been brought out from the cold in a similar way to Stokes in 2022, when the all-rounder hadn’t played any T20 cricket in over a year. Instead, Root will watch on with plenty of admiration, the World Cup group having been selected before the Sri Lanka series. “I look at that squad of players, it’s a hell of a team,” he added.
His tour is over, ending a fascinating season abroad. Twenty-nine runs in three ODIs against New Zealand were followed by just eight more in the Ashes opener. Pat Cummins, his great nemesis, nicked him off twice in the quick’s only appearance of the series, and the overall story did not change as Root left his fourth Ashes tour still waiting for collective glory.
But he ended the noise over that missing Test hundred in Australia, turning one into two, and at least shared a victorious hug with Stokes at the MCG. If there was any lingering misery, he masterfully put it aside in Colombo to end England’s dreadful recent run in ODIs away from home, sweating his way to a series average of 123.5.
Throw in that hundred at Sydney and he finds himself in serious touch again. It seems a waste that England will not have him for the final act.
