Joe Root did not have many reasons to smile as he addressed the media ahead of England’s flight to the Caribbean on Thursday.
There isn’t much humour to be found in addressing humiliation against Australia, least of all when you are lucky to still be in a job when three others have lost theirs. Nor addressing why a supposed remedy to those failings is to drop two bowling stalwarts when the batters are the root cause of that trauma. But he allowed himself a chuckle while addressing the other solution to arise from the Ashes post-mortem – his move up to number three in the order.
