England’s big reset is undermined by Joe Root the third-class captain

After the year England’s Test team have had, nine out of 10 captains would have resigned or been sacked. Joe Root survived, somehow, while several other heads rolled. After impressing Andrew Strauss with his appetite, he was given the chance to rebuild his own broken team. He banished Stuart Broad and Jimmy Anderson, the only top-class bowlers at his disposal. And in the first two Tests in West Indies, it looked as if it might just be working.

Even a Root-o-sceptic had to admit that there were signs of progress. The fielding was sharper, the team spirit stronger, the batters were shaking off the dismal shackles of the Chris Silverwood era. Dan Lawrence, miscast as he might be at No 4, belted some selfless runs. And although both those Tests were drawn, it was England who were pressing for victory on the fifth day.

But that was on a pair of dead pitches – a double featherbed. In Grenada, on a spicier surface, it’s been glaringly obvious that Root has failed to fix one of his team’s biggest flaws: his own captaincy. On the third morning he ran through his full repertoire of howlers.

When Chris Woakes reverted to his overseas inertia with the new ball, Root kept him on for 50 minutes. When Joshua Da Silva tried a big hit, Root moved his third slip into the leg side to save the single. Despite this, the singles kept coming, nearly all of them on the leg side. For one of them, Da Silva sadistically worked the ball just out of Root’s reach at midwicket, leaving him flat on the floor. His red-ball reset was now accompanied by a red-face emoji.

You had to feel for him, because he’s so clearly a nice person. The problem is that being nice isn’t what captaincy is about. You can smile and smile and be a duffer. You can be a hard