Former English captains unhappy with Joe Root's tactics in the 1st Test

Joe Root and his English contingent are under the pump against a spirited Pakistan side, that out-witted them across every department of the game. Root once again failed to convert a fifty into a hundred, leaving him with the worst conversion rate amongst his other fab-four companions.

Former English skippers Michael Atherton and Michael Vaughan are completely unhappy with how Root has been handling affairs at the moment. He was himself fielding at short-leg on the second day, and that didn’t go down well with these former cricketers. They believe it’s not a position where the captain of the side fields as it does not give him a view of the entire ground.

“I think that’s a ridiculous place to captain from, you captain well from first slip. You captain well from mid-off or mid-on where you’ve got a nice view of the game. Under the lid at short leg is no place for a captain to be,” Atherton said.

“England have a had a problem in that situation because Mark Stoneman, who did it in the winter, is not very good there. But I don’t care if Mark Stoneman is not very good, find someone else to do it. The captain should not be at short leg. You can’t see the game. All you’ve got a view of is the batsman’s backside,” he added.

The team is not well coached: Vaughan

Former England captain Michael Vaughan took a dig at the coach Trevor Bayliss as well, stating that the team isn’t coached well for this game. He compared the team to a bunch of schoolboys for the way they were changing the slip cordon every over.

“They just look like a side … (that) need oiling, They’re not well coached. This Test match team is not well coached. The cordon changes every other over. It’s a little bit like the schoolboy teams. You get in a position on the park that you fancy and you just stay in it,” Vaughan said.

He also pointed that James Anderson fielding at slips isn’t a great idea and that some other young players like Dominic Bess or Mark Stoneman should be fielding at short-leg, not the captain of the side.

“You’ve got Joe Root who has a go at short leg, then Alastair Cook has the helmet on. Mark Stoneman, whether they think he’s useless in there or he’s got some kind of injury, we’ve not heard of an injury so they must think he can’t catch. You’ve got Dominic Bess who could go under the lid. A youngster, somebody vibrant,” Vaughan opined.

On the back of a resistive partnership between Jos Buttler and Bess, England have managed to obtain a 56-run lead in the second inning.

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