Joe Root backs Moeen Ali to play second Ashes Test despite injured finger

We are on the brink of the cricket having a chance of taking centre stage again. On the eve of the second match of this Ashes series it was almost a relief to hear Joe Root talking about injury worries, which used to be the staple diet of discussion in between Tests.

There is concern about Moeen Ali’s spinning finger. He did not bowl in the nets on Thursday; he was going to have a go on Friday evening. “I think he would still play”, said Root. “Even if he was not fully fit to bowl.” Later he would confirm the intention to keep Moeen at No6 with Jonny Bairstow at seven. “Mo has been outstanding recently,” he said. “He’s just had a wonderful summer. He deserves that chance at six and Jonny at seven knows how to get the best of the tail.”

So England may have the same team, though they will at least consider replacing Jake Ball with Craig Overton. By contrast Steve Smith was able to confirm that he would play the same team on a surface that was “a bit harder and less grassy” than recent pitches in Adelaide.

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There was a cursory mention of the weather, which is suddenly “English”. “It could be a bit damp and cool and that should play into our hands,” he said. Root then expressed confidence in Alastair Cook, who only contributed nine runs in Brisbane. “I’m not losing sleep over him,” Root said. “He’s a world class act.”

It was “fantastic” that Ben Stokes had the chance to play some cricket outdoors. And he had really enjoyed his time in Adelaide in the Darren Lehmann Academy as a 19-year-old.

But then the questions became a little trickier. There was the tacit invitation to become a whingeing Pom and no one over here likes one of them. Any criticism of the home side tends to be regarded as a whinge if the Australian team happens to be giving their opposition a damn good hiding, which was the case in Brisbane. It was an invitation that the soft-spoken Root managed to decline.

So when he was asked about the prospect of another bouncer barrage for his tailenders, Root avoided the incendiary word “unsportsmanlike” that had the cables flying 85 years ago. Instead he said: “It’s Test cricket. You’ve got to expect traffic. They played to their strengths and you can’t knock that.”

Next surfaced the ubiquitous topic of “sledging”. There is the suspicion here that Australia’s tormenting of Bairstow at Brisbane went beyond a discussion of “head-butting”. Until they decide to keep the microphones permanently on, a notion that begins as a joke but which increasingly seems like a neat way to ensure that 21^st century standards of behaviour are maintained, we will never know for sure.

Here Root had to choose his words carefully. “I think you come to expect it [sledging] in Ashes cricket and you’ve got to make sure you deal with it. It’s not something that’s new to us as a side. There is a place for a bit of banter on the field as long as it stays as banter and it doesn’t become more than that. If it does the umpires need to make sure it has a line that’s stopped at by both sides.

“You don’t want it to become a series where the umpires are telling guys to get on with the game and getting involved at every single opportunity. You want there to be a bit of niggle out there and a bit of banter flying around. That’s good for the game; it’s good to watch; it’s good to be involved in; it makes for good television. But there are certain things that people know they should and shouldn’t say on a field and it’s important that both sides – not just one side, both sides – get that right and have enough respect for each other not to overstep the mark”.

Root was asked whether that mark was overstepped when Bairstow was at the crease. “You’d have to ask him. I’ve not really had a good enough conversation to find out. In his case I’d like to think they know where/when to stop and when too far is too far. If they have gone too far then it says more about them than it does about anything else”.