Cricket is a game played by gentlemen.
A press conference conducted by sportsmen whose pride hurts as though a beamer caught it in a sensitive area is another matter altogether. Joe Root neglected his Ps and Qs yesterday to offer a more robust appraisal of England and his role as part of the side which sustained a 157-run loss to Sri Lanka at Chester-le-Street as the tourists levelled the five-match Royal London series at 1-1.
The two sides will resume tomorrow at Emirates Old Trafford, with the hosts confident that captain Alastair Cook can recover from the groin strain which sidelined him in the last match. There will be hopes too that England can show similar powers of recovery and arrest a slump in one-day internationals that would become more apparent at Chester-le-Street on Sunday.
Neither stand-in captain Eoin Morgan nor Root have sought to find an excuse for their team's capitulation, instead dismissing their performance in as harsh terms as can be deemed printable. The sense of frustration has been most acute for Root as he was bowled for a third-ball duck as England fell to 99 all out in just 26.1 overs.
"We don't want fans turning up for games and seeing a performance like that," he said yesterday. "It's quite embarrassing."
That may not be as great a concern given that attendances have fallen for one-day internationals. Only Lord's is expected to be a sell-out in this series.
Root is convinced that supporters will return in good numbers, but only if his England team improve on the field. "Sometimes you get emotional on the day of the game, [so] it's better to leave it a few days and then discuss it as a side," he said.
"We have got to make sure we're very honest with ourselves and don't let a performance like that happen again. The one way to get people to come and watch you is to win games and we have to make sure we can do that consistently, earn the right for people to want to come and watch us.
"We don't want to play like that, where people come to watch and feel let down. We want to make sure everyone who comes in is impressed by what they see and want to come again."
England are not, however, about to lose faith in the ability they demonstrated last week when they took an early lead in the series with an 81-run success at The Oval. "We can't really worry about it too much," Root added. "We played some really good cricket at The Oval, which was not even a week ago now.
"If we do play at the top of our game we're going to beat sides like Sri Lanka. If we're being brutally honest it just wasn't a good enough performance from the whole team, especially the batters."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article