Joe Root admits unease at missing England matches to play in IPL

Joe Root has admitted to feeling uncomfortable with the prospect of being rested for England’s Twenty20 tri-series with Australia and New Zealand while still going ahead with his plan to play in the IPL.

England decided on Monday that Root will miss the tri-series that starts on Feb 7 with coach Trevor Bayliss viewing it as a rare chance to give his best batsman a break.

But it means Root is missing England games when he could, in theory, have opted out of playing in the IPL instead, using that period before the English summer to recover from a long winter.

It suggests international cricket comes second to the IPL but the England & Wales Cricket Board is now just being realistic. Root has entered the IPL auction, which takes place on Saturday and Sunday in Bangalore, for the first time with the highest reserve price of £170,000, and the board knows it can no longer prevent its players from cashing in on massive deals.

The ECB also now encourages its players to go to India after years of taking the opposite view, another sign of its prioritising of ODI cricket in the build-up to the 2019 World Cup.

Root is reluctantly missing the T20s against Australia and New Zealand and said he can understand why the decision will be questioned.

“I hate missing games of cricket for England. It is something that doesn’t really sit well with me either. It was a long, hard decision that me and Trevor had to come to,” said Root, speaking about the IPL for the first time since his entry was confirmed last week.

“You look at the amount of cricket that we have got coming up and the opportunity that the IPL brings and you almost have to look at it as more of an investment for my game and for all the England team moving forward.

“If being involved in that block of cricket, with everything that tournament brings, is going to add more to my game for the next four or five years then missing a few games here might be worthwhile.”

There could be more England players than ever before bought in the IPL auction. Their stock has risen through consistent white ball performances and the fact they are now available for most of the tournament. England’s Test players will be free to play in the IPL from April 3, when the Test series in New Zealand ends, until May 17. They will have just one championship match to readjust to early summer English conditions before the first Test against Pakistan at Lord’s on May 24. The one-day specialists such as Jos Buttler, Eoin Morgan, Alex Hales and Jason Roy are free to play IPL until it ends on May 27.

Root has heard Stokes and Buttler extol the virtues of playing the IPL, with the latter touching upon the experiences gained in global T20 leagues after his hundred at the SCG on Sunday. Root, a keen student of the game, wants to expose himself to playing against the best T20 players in the most pressurised league of them all but also admits the financial allure is hard to resist as well. 

Root is in the top bracket of overseas players with a base price at the auction of $235,000 (£170,000) but will be hoping to go for a lot more. Stokes has been tipped to break through the $2million (£1.4million) mark. 

Root has never played in an overseas league and his Twenty20 experience is restricted to England and Yorkshire. He has only played five Natwest Blast matches since 2012 and fears falling behind in a format of the game that is constantly evolving.

“Of course, there is a money side to it, there is no point lying about it. That is obviously a benefit of playing in the IPL but that is not why I went into the auction,” said Root. “I really believe playing a block of Twenty20 cricket with that scrutiny, being under pressure for long periods of time against the world’s players in that format would be a great opportunity to develop and learn my white-ball game. 

“With the two major tournaments in white-ball cricket around the corner that is what going there is all about, to gain experience in the short form and work with other players around the world who have had a huge amount of exposure to Twenty20 cricket, and see some different coaches.”