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Due to the crisis created by the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic, many sports leagues had to shut down or postpone their respective games and matches for the season. This also means there are no cricket match odds to analyze. The simultaneous country-wide lockdowns left players no choice but to return to their homes.

The upside is that they get to spend more time with their families during this crisis. Amongst these players is England Test team captain Joe Root. He has been spending some time home with his family, especially with his three and a half-year-old son. Great cricketing skills obviously run in the Root family as he jokes, ‘He’s 500 for 4 at the minute. It’s a bit of a flat track here’, referring to his son. 

The England Test captain and his team members find it a strange time because they would have been competing at the second Test in Sri Lanka had the tour not been aborted. Now, they are stuck in a sort of limbo as they focus on the health of their families. Like everyone else, they are also unsure of when they can come back to normality.

On a conference call with journalists, he expressed that he has been ‘... taking it seriously, trying to stay indoors as much as possible, avoid contact at all cost.' 

He finds it ‘... pretty impossible to get [to] online shops at the moment’ as they are trying to get out as little as possible. 

He also indicated that they are trying to be efficient with what they’re buying and using every day like being ‘... creative with our cooking, finding different ways of using what we’ve got in the fridge, not wasting anything’.

Root is expecting to have discussions with the England players over the next few weeks. They will have discussions if they might also offer their support by taking a pay cut. This is in hopes that it will help alleviate some of the financial problems the ECB will come under if there is a significant interruption to the season. 

He is aware that it will be discussions that will take place between the PCA and ECB, however, he admits that it is beyond his area of expertise. 

‘I think we just have to concentrate on making sure we are as fit and as ready to go as we can be for whenever we get back to playing cricket,’ he added. 

The interruption that the pandemic caused to England’s schedule is hardly the most important consequence, but Root admits that not being able to play still frustrates him. The England Test team did good work on their South African tour at the start of the year where they won 3-1. 

‘We made big strides in South Africa. It would have been nice to get those games in to see if we could keep building our away form,’ said Joe Root regarding the wins in the previous Test matches.

He also believes that there ‘... are more important things to concern ourselves with, but we were preparing ourselves well for the two-Test matches in Sri Lanka’.

About not being able to play cricket the whole summer, all the Test team captain can say is ‘... we have to stay optimistic. We’ve got to stay fit. Obviously [we] can’t do much in terms of actual practice, hitting balls and bowling’. 

He can only joke about how his wife will start giving him throwdowns in their back garden and that ‘...until things become that drastic, it will be simply sit tight and wait’.

The England Test team is due to play the West Indies and Pakistan in the series this summer. This forms part of the World Test Championship with the Sri Lanka matches also carrying WTC points. However, it will not be easy to fit the WTC final to the already packed schedules in June next year if the two home series cannot take place. 

The Ashes series in Australia is also coming down the line in Winter 2020/21, albeit a little way off yet. 

Root also declared that ‘A lot of the things we do in Test cricket revolves around planning for the Ash series.’ They have to play around 17 to 20 games before they go down to Australia.

He proclaimed that they have to use every single opportunity they can to build the team up and be absolutely ready for any condition Australia will throw at them, on and off the field. 

There will surely be a spike in the cricket match odds when the matches resume.

Root admits that he has gained useful motivation for the fitness sessions by watching the Amazon Prime documentary about the Australian team, The Test. He undertakes his workout routine in his indoor bike and in his garden with his dog, Archie. 

Thankfully, the Root family has been safe and well at the moment. Root has been helping his grandparents install apps on their phones, so they can stay in touch. He affectionately describes this endeavour as ‘challenging’ with a smile on his face.