Joe Root says Eoin Morgan success is built on trust and responsibility
Watch 'Joe Root: The Summer Ahead' on Sky Sports Cricket on Saturday at 7pm
Saturday 25 May 2019 21:29, UK
Test captain Joe Root says Eoin Morgan's success as England's one-day skipper is built on the trust and responsibility he's invested in his players.
Morgan was handed the one-day captaincy a matter of months before England's disastrous 2015 Cricket World Cup campaign but since then has steered the side to top spot in the rankings, making them favourites ahead of this summer's tournament - which begins on Sky Sports Cricket on Thursday.
Speaking to Ian Ward for our show 'Joe Root: The Summer Ahead' which you can watch on Sky Sports Cricket from 7pm on Saturday - before Morgan sustained a finger injury in training on Friday - Root described the Dubliner as "brilliant".
"He's never wavered from how he wants us to go about things. When we've got it wrong he's made sure that we've learnt but we've stuck to our mantra and how we want to approach one-day cricket," Root said.
"He and Trevor [Bayliss] have a brilliant dynamic that works very well and he's very good at getting the best out of his players. He's put a lot of trust in guys and given them a lot of responsibility and that has been paid back in kind.
"Look at someone like Jason [Roy] who really struggled throughout the Champions Trophy tournament; he's now probably playing the best cricket that we've seen in an England shirt.
"At no point was he put to one side. We know this guy is going to be a serious England player and, similarly, someone like Jonny [Bairstow] as well; he had to wait for his opportunity and now you are seeing us reap the rewards so it's great that he's put that much trust in the group and in the players around him.
"I think the guys are really grateful and the reason we've had so much success is because we've had the same group there for a long time; we know how each other works and how to get the best out of each other."
Root, who will lead England into the Ashes a little over a fortnight after the World Cup final, says the way that Morgan has conducted himself has helped him to develop as a Test captain despite the difference in the formats.
"He's very clear about how he wants to go about things," Root added. "It's a little bit easier to do that in one-day cricket - you can sort of see a situation and go with it whereas in Test cricket that might change during the course of a session or over the course of five days.
"You have to be maybe slightly more adaptable and change things up a little bit more frequently.
"But I think the way he holds himself, the way he addresses the group, the way he manages his players is very impressive and over the course of the last two years in particular I've tried to pick his brains and take a lot out of the way he operates and try to transfer those skills into my own."
