Joe Root "expecting a response" from England following Adelaide frustration

GEORGE DOBELL: The England captain remains confident that Australia are not "that much better" as a team and believes dismissing Steve Smith and Marnus Labuschagne early will cause panic in the dressing room

Joe Root is "expecting a response" from his team after the blunt words exchanged at the end of the Adelaide Test.

Root admits he was uncharacteristically angry with his side in his assessment of their performance at the end of the match that saw England go 2-0 down in the series. They now have to win all three remaining Tests to regain the Ashes.

But while he has been disappointed with England’s display, Root remains confident that Australia are not "that much better" as a team. In particular, he feels that if England can dismiss Steve Smith and Marnus Labuschagne early, it will "cause all sorts of panic" within their dressing room.

And he expects to lead from the front with an "over my dead body" display of determination with the bat.

"It did come easy to be angry at the end of the last game because of the situation we’re in and the manner in which we lost," Root said after training at the MCG on Thursday. "I’ll always try to look at things with a level, pragmatic approach but I don’t think you could after the way we’ve played those last two games. I expect a response from everyone this week.

^{Removing Steve Smith and Marnus Labuschagne is the key, believes Root [Ryan Pierse/Getty Images]}

"There was a lot of frustration. Purely because of the basic mistakes that we’ve been making. And we’ve done it twice in a row.

"We can’t afford to be losing eight wickets for 70 or 80 runs. It is not good enough. It is not the level that an England Test team should be playing at. The guys know that and they’re very aware of that.

"Their work ethic is very good and you’ll have seen how guys practice and how long they bat for in the nets, but sometimes I think we can be smarter about what we are practising and how we are practising.

"And understanding that batting, in my opinion, it's about making good decisions for long periods of time. It's not about hitting a million balls and feeling a million dollars. Sometimes it's just about finding a way of staying there until it becomes a little bit easier. And I think we need to harness that mentality a little bit more.

Root is confident he can lead from the front. While he has never scored a Test century in Australia – he has played 11 Tests here – he has passed 50 in five of his seven most recent innings in the country and is within 158 runs of equalling Mohammad Yousuf’s record of 1,788 Test runs in a calendar year.

As a result, he feels confident he will not just score that long-awaited century but reclaim the No.1 Test batting ranking which passed to Labuschagne earlier in the week.

"We can’t afford to be losing eight wickets for 70 or 80 runs. It is not good enough."

"I feel in a really good place with my batting," Root said. "I'm playing nicely still. I'm confident I can bang out a hundred in these next three games.

"I know that's a brave thing to say but that conversion rate hasn’t been an issue at all this year. I feel like I have an understanding of how I want to score my runs. I just need to have the bit between my teeth. [I need that] over my dead body [attitude].

"It’s about managing the conditions for me. If you look at three of the four dismissals I have had, they've been in that channel.

"It doesn't swing and it doesn't seam as much in these condition, so you feel like you can hit the ball. You feel in control and that can lure you in. And that extra bit of bounce can bring the nick.

"I've never been especially motivated by the Test rankings, but it would be nice to have it back for Christmas."

^{Root wants his team to take inspiration from India's triumph in Australia in 2020/21 [Patrick Hamilton/Getty Images]}

Root is also keen his team do not build up the strength of their Australian counterparts too much. He wants them to remember that, this time last year, an Indian side missing some of its best-known players inflicted defeat upon them.

In particular, he wants his seamers to remember the first session of the fourth day in Adelaide when their fuller length created all sorts of problems for batters who have, at other times, been able to leave a large percentage of deliveries.

"I don’t think Australia are that much better than us in these conditions," he said. "The scoreline would suggest they’re absolutely a far better team than us but I don’t think they are.

"If we perform anywhere like we can do, we’ll put them in an uncomfortable position. We’ll push back and we’ll find ourselves in a very different situation leaving this ground.

"If you keep bowling six-and-a-half or seven metres [from the stumps], it's going to go over the top of the stumps even if your line is immaculate. And that means you can't get them out through two of the most important modes of dismissal [bowled and leg before].

"As soon as we did bowl fuller, we showed how dangerous we could be and how many problems we caused.

"And we know those two players [Smith and Labuschagne] in particular, if we can dismiss them for not many runs, it will cause all sorts of panic. We saw it this time last year against India. It has a massive effect on the rest of the batting group. And we've got to look to exploit that as best we can.

"Whenever you go 2-0 down in a five-match series it is always tough. But we have to show resilience and not feel sorry for ourselves. We have to prove a point and show we are a far better team than what we have provided at the start.

"The final day in Adelaide was proof we can come back in this series. The application, the attitude, the way we went about that, getting as close as we did to getting something from the game was in some way frustrating because it should have been there from the start.

"I understand you are going to make mistakes but to do it two weeks in a row is going to be frustrating hence why I expect us to be much better this time. I expect a response from our players."

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