Joe Root is not too bothered to have been omitted from this year’s BBC Sports Personality of the Year shortlist. For a start he has been here before. At secondary school the budding cricketer was up against three other youngsters for a sports personality award but lost out to “a girl in the sixth form who did athletics”.
“This is rubbish,” he thought at the time. “How can they possibly give it to someone who does running and jumping? There is no skill involved in that at all.” And the girl? Jessica Ennis-Hill, who he now admits has not had a bad career. “I wouldn’t have won it anyway with her on the list,” he says with a laugh about this year’s award.
The 24-year-old Root is more diplomatic than he was at 12. He no longer thinks being bested by athletes, cyclists and even foot-in-mouth boxers is rubbish. “Those 12 nominees have done fantastic things in their sports,” he says. But he accepts the fact no cricketer has made the shortlist in an Ashes-winning year is a “good wake-up call” for the sport. “The ECB have recognised it and are trying to rectify it. As players all we can do is make sure we’re trying to play an entertaining style of cricket.”
It is not the fact that Root is the top-rated batsman in the world and was man of the series in the Ashes that makes his omission bizarre but that he does – unlike many sports people – have a personality. The most characteristic part of his batting, apart from its potency, is that he always seems to be enjoying it.
In the book he has produced to mark his golden summer, Bringing Home the Ashes, he says he strives to avoid “playing like a robot”. “It’s very easy to get into that mode,” he tells me. “You’re always under pressure and you’ve got such a structured schedule that you can let it affect the way you play. You have to keep the ability to express yourself. If I was playing for my local club I’d want to play in exactly the same way as if I was playing for England and, if that ever changes, it’s probably time to stop.”
Team spirit – playing with a kind of collective smile on the face – matters to Root, which explains why he thinks Kevin Pietersen had to be dropped when he wrote a book slagging off the England management and some of his team-mates. “He was very good for all the young lads coming into the side and it was enjoyable to work with him,” says Root, “but the content of his book and the way he handled it disappointed me.” He dug his own grave? “Essentially, yes,” says Root. Trust within the dressing room had broken down and there was no easy way to restore it.
The fabled dressing room is a place “sacred to the team”, according to Root (or perhaps his ghostwriter). In his book he makes it sound like a world of non-stop japes, with the ends being snipped off socks, a hole being cut in Stuart Broad’s cricket bag and the famous celebratory Ashes interview Root did on live TV while wearing an Einstein mask and impersonating Bob Willis’s Brummie drone. Does all this jocularity not become a bit wearing? “You have to have a laugh and a joke,” he says. “If you spend five days playing a Test match and so much time together off the field, it’s important to keep morale high.”
I recall a jape that involved delivering a tiny toy bat to James Taylor. Was that not a bit near the knuckle given the way some have seen Taylor’s stature as a potential weakness? “If we knew it wasn’t going to be received well, then we wouldn’t do it,” says Root. “We spend so much time together that you know what you can and can’t get away with. It’s really important that guys don’t feel they’re being persecuted or made fun of. That’s not what it’s about.”
But paranoia does seem to stalk cricketers – witness the breakdowns of Jonathan Trott and now, according to recent reports, Monty Panesar. Did he sense their problems? “It’s sometimes very hard to see,” says Root. “Because we spend so much time together you like to think you would be aware of that but being under huge amounts of pressure for such long periods and spending so much time away from home can build up. You’ve got to be very careful and very honest.” I suggest it is a matter for the coaches but he disagrees. “I think we need to talk to each other. We’re grown men. We shouldn’t be in a position where it’s teacher-pupil. We have to be mature enough to talk to each other.”
Root’s maturity – and the seriousness beneath the smile – belies his years and he is talked of as the next England captain. “A lot of people are saying that,” he admits. “But I’ve at no point said I think that’s going to be the case. Being vice-captain, I’ve just got to make sure I keep taking that responsibility on and keep learning in case down the line the opportunity arises. At the minute I feel I’m growing into the role [of vice-captain] a little bit better. I don’t think it’s something you can necessarily train for. You just have to learn on the job.”
Root made his England debut exactly three years ago, at the age of 21, and he says those years – and the 35 Tests he has played – have flown by. “I’ve grown up quite a lot in that time. You’ve got to. When I first started playing [for England] I was quite naive. I thought I was completely ready to take on Test cricket but I definitely feel I’ve had to learn on the job and develop my game massively.”
Failing against Australia in the 2013‑14 series and being dropped for the final Test – he said he “had more beers in that series than I scored runs and I didn’t have many beers either” – was part of the maturing process.
“I did find it tough,” he says, “and that’s where the ‘I don’t want to be a robot’ came from. I got so structured in everything I did, trying to do the same thing all the time. I was working on all the things I thought I needed to work on and neglecting all my strengths. It’s important to get a balance between the two and to keep your training fresh so that every time you rock up you’re looking forward to it.”
Root was destined to be a cricketer. His grandfather, whom he calls a “classical Yorkshireman”, loves the game; his father was good enough to play second XI county cricket; and a plastic bat was placed in the young Root’s cot when he was two hours old. He probably picked it up and drove a fluffy bear for four.
His younger brother Bill, with whom he had a ferocious sibling rivalry, is also striving to make it in county cricket. Does Bill envy the already rooted Root? “No, he’s very proud [of what I’ve achieved]. When I get a chance to help him out with training or go and watch him, I always will. But the important thing is that he finds his own way. That’s one of his biggest challenges – being compared to me.”
When they were growing up, some thought Bill had the greater talent – “He was always compared to [David] Gower, while I was always compared to [Geoff] Boycott” – but it was Joe who got to the top. Relentless dedication was the key – he even shaved the edges of his bat so that in the nets he was forced to use the middle. “I wanted to be successful and when it came to practice I wanted to get as close to perfection as I could,” he says. Now, ironically, he is trying to shed some of that technical perfectionism because the speed of scoring in international cricket demands ceaseless innovation and flexibility.
When Root started playing Tests, the former England captain Michael Vaughan described him as a “boy in a man’s world”. Is he now a man in a man’s world? “I’m getting there,” says Root with another of those laughs. “I think I’m into adolescence now.”
Bringing Home the Ashes is published by Hodder & Stoughton (£20)
