England’s Joe Root felt Michael Vaughan’s comments were personal. (Source: Reuters)
After former England captain Michael Vaughan criticised the performance of England against South Africa in the second Test, skipper Joe Root called his comments unfair and personal.
Vaughan said after England lost by 340 runs that their side is following a ‘gung-ho approach’. “It has been the story of the Test team for two and a half years. They don’t seem to be able to read the situation – they have this gung-ho approach.”
“For such a long period of time they have played as if the only way to approach it is to hit the ball to the boundary. You have to be able to wear the opposition down,” Vaughan said on BBC Radio 5 live on Wednesday. “Jonny Bairstow came out at number five batting on roller-blades, trying to smash everything to the boundary. I don’t think they respected the way Test cricket needed to be played.”
“I’m passionate about the England team and I get frustrated when I see a team with so much talent. I don’t think they’ve got the make-up of the side right. The batting has been a weakness for a while now. The talent is there and there is all the potential to be a brilliant team, but you don’t become a brilliant team without the brains and being smart.
The series are now level at 1-1. “You’ve got to have a group of players that are very smart in the middle and one week they play smart cricket and the next they don’t. They should be more consistent than they have been over the last year or so. They had to take a lot of criticism and rightly so, but they could quite easily turn it around this week,” he added.
Root, who called the former captain’s comments personal later said that it was his job to be opinionated. In a post-match conference, Root said, “It’s his job, isn’t it, to be opinionated and say what he thinks. At the time I was very disappointed with the way we played and caught a little bit off guard with the question.”
“It felt a bit personal at the time, but on reflection you have to understand people have an obligation to do their job and say how they feel they see it,” he added.
