Joe Root has no intention of walking away from ODI cricket at the end of the Cricket World Cup, insisting he would happily sign up for another four-year cycle.
England’s squad is loaded with 11 thirty-somethings and it would be no surprise to see several call time once the title defence is over next month – win or lose.
Moeen Ali, Chris Woakes and Ben Stokes are among those who could call it a day, the latter for a second time.
Root has none of the major fitness issues that have plagued Stokes and, at 32, time is on his side. Having found himself surplus to requirements in T20 cricket for the last four years, he sees no reason to pigeonhole himself as a Test specialist.
Questions persist over what role the 50-over game will play in an increasingly congested global schedule in the near future but with the 2027 edition already awarded to South Africa, Namibia and Zimbabwe, the showpiece event does not appear to going anywhere soon.
And Root, for one, plans to be there.
“Yeah, I’d like to go on a safari!” he said.
“I’d love to still be playing in four years’ time. The cricket landscape’s forever changing isn’t it, but I can’t see myself not being there unless I’m not good enough and guys have gone past me.
“Retire? No. I’ll get pushed before that.”
Root has already assured himself his latest page in England’s history books since arriving in India, overtaking Graham Gooch as the country’s record run-scorer at World Cups. Having passed his mark of 897 in the win over Bangladesh, Root should become the first Englishman to reach four figures before the end of the tournament.
But for now, that is a peripheral concern to the team’s wider ambitions.
“It’s got to mean something over a long period of time to hold any weight,” he said.
“It would be nice if we win a World Cup at the end of it, because we’d have two World Cups and I’d be the leading run-scorer. But, from a personal point of view, they’re all niceties. It’s got to stand for something and the only way it does is if we go on this thing, which we know we can.”
