Veteran England pacer Stuart Broad on Sunday said he has a huge amount of sympathy for Test captain Joe Root and head coach Chris Silverwood after the 4-0 thrashing in the Ashes. Since the shambolic Ashes result in Australia, critics have asked for Root and Silverwood to be sacked in order to do a complete revamp of England’s approach to red-ball cricket.
“There has been speculation about the leadership positions of the England Test team in the aftermath of the Ashes series defeat but I think it’s important to place things into context. In my lifetime I cannot recall a more difficult two years for anyone to have been captain or coach. We have played an extortionate amount of Test cricket,” wrote Broad in his column for Daily Mail on Sunday.
“We’ve changed our players considerably to look after mental health — we’ve made 47 changes of personnel in 15 Tests. It’s been incredibly tough for both Joe Root and Chris Silverwood to get any consistency in playing XIs or in the coaching staff and that makes it hard to reinforce the messages you are trying to get across to the team. I have a huge amount of sympathy for both of them,” added Broad, with 152 Test caps to his name.
Talking about the embarrassing 4-0 loss in the Ashes, Broad remarked, “At the end of the day, we England players weren’t good enough, Australia are a better Test team than us, and contain greater armoury in more positions. To win in Australia you need your England team to be at its absolute best and for Australia to have a really wobbly, torrid time.
