Joe Root Defends Pakistan Amid Series Dominance
Joe Root walked into his pre-match press conference at Edgbaston as the captain of a side already 2-0 up, series wrapped, dominance established. He could have indulged in a little back-patting. Instead, he bristled.
Asked what it was like to play against a team supposedly offering “no fight”, Root cut the notion down quickly. For him, the idea that Pakistan have rolled over in this series is not just lazy. It is “disrespectful”.
“Absolutely we have found Pakistan a challenge,” he said, pushing back hard on the narrative that England have simply steamrolled a weak, compliant side. “I think that's a bit disrespectful to both Pakistan as a team and to us as a team.”
The numbers tell one story. England have crushed Pakistan twice: an innings-and-103-run win at Headingley, followed by a 194-run victory at Lord’s. Across four innings, Pakistan have not once reached 200, repeatedly undone by an England pace attack of Ollie Robinson, Jofra Archer, Josh Tongue and Gus Atkinson that has hunted in packs and read conditions ruthlessly.
But Root’s point is that those margins say as much about England’s sharpness as they do about Pakistan’s failings.
“I don't think we've allowed them to get into games because of how well we've played,” he said, “and how quickly we've read the situations and the surfaces that we've had.”
That is the captain’s view of a series many have already filed under “mismatch”. Outside the dressing rooms, Pakistan have been painted as one of the weakest Test outfits the country has sent to these shores in decades. Inside, Root sees something else: a team England have smothered before it could breathe.
Pakistan arrive in Birmingham after a week of upheaval that would have broken lesser squads. The Pakistan Cricket Board reacted brutally to the Lord’s defeat, sending seven players home, removing Test coach Sarfaraz Ahmed and parachuting in white-ball coach Mike Hesson to lead the side for the finale. Seven players have been added, five of them uncapped at Test level. It is not so much a tweak as a reset.
From the outside, it looks chaotic. From the England balcony, it looks dangerous.
Root, who has seen enough Pakistan sides over the years to know their volatility, refused to indulge any sense of complacency.
“There's a very talented group of players in that dressing room and you've got to be ready for it,” he warned. “So we'll make sure that we are.”
The temptation, when a series sits at 2-0 with both wins by enormous margins, is to lapse into easy binaries: one team excellent, the other abject. Root rejected that, too.
“I think it's very easy to say one team is excellent and one team is poor. Normally it's somewhere in the middle,” he said. If England have looked outstanding, his argument runs, that does not automatically render Pakistan a rabble. “If one team has been outstanding then the other team can't have been poor and vice-versa. I think it's important to live in that middle area somewhere and understand that that's not how it is.”
It is a revealing line from a captain who has built this England side on clarity, not noise. He wants his players to recognise the quality of their own work without buying into the idea that the opposition are passengers. Because that is where standards slip.
So, as Edgbaston looms, Root is treating this third Test not as a lap of honour but as a new contest.
“Regardless of what's happened over the last two games,” he said, “this week it's a completely different proposition for us.”
England have already sealed the series. Pakistan arrive with a patched-up squad, a new voice in the dressing room and a bruised reputation. The stage looks lopsided. Root’s tone suggests he is preparing for the moment it suddenly isn’t.
