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England head coach Brendon McCullum has thrown his weight behind star batter Joe Root despite the latter's struggles in the ongoing Test series against India.
The former England captain has been under the scanner for some of his dismissals, the latest being an attempted reverse sweep to Jasprit Bumrah that went straight into the hands of Yashasvi Jaiswal in the slip cordon.
Several former England cricketers have explained why Joe Root needed to play the way he always had and not try and get into the Bazball mode. However, on BBC's Test Match Special Podcast, Brendon McCullum spoke about how being more positive would get the best out of Root:
"People see a shot like that and go, 'Joe Root is struggling to deal with this new regime'. His impact on the game is still very, very significant. Imagine if this becomes the norm for Joe as well, with the talent he possesses and the history he's got.
"Then what's the ceiling? Do we want just a normal Joe Root, or do we want an even better Joe Root? How many games are we going to win if that happens."
In six innings in the Test series so far, Joe Root has scored just 77 runs. Many believe his dismissal on Day 3 was the turning point in the game as India seemed to be under the pump until then. Root's wicket led to an England collapse that the visitors just couldn't recover from.
England are a better team now than 18 months ago: Brendon McCullum
Despite the mammoth 434-run loss in Rajkot, Brendon McCullum wants to look at the bigger picture. He claimed that the visitors had come a long way due to their ultra-aggressive brand of cricket and wanted them to keep entertaining.
On this, McCullum stated:
"We've still got some progress to make and some things to improve on, but we're a better team now than we were 18 months ago. We're obviously not totally screwed down on the method yet. There will be times when we don't quite get it right because it's a hard way to play. It's asking guys to take the game on and sometimes we have to deal with failure."
England have lost six out of the 21 Tests under the leadership of Ben Stokes and coaching of Brendon McCullum so far. The fourth Test in Ranchi could arguably be the biggest test of their character yet.
