Joe Root is one of the best one-day players in the world and he proved it again in England’s eight-wicket win over the West Indies with another brilliant century.
His recent record is outstanding and having him as that rock in the batting line-up helps the more attack-minded guys because they know Joe is there to steady the ship.
It just seems a formality at the moment he’s going to score 50-plus and quite often turn that into a century. He had to open the batting at short notice due to Jason Roy’s injury but he took it all in his stride.
Joe went about his innings brilliantly and scored as quickly as Jonny Bairstow at other end – he looked great and it was a very low-maintenance knock. He kept it simple and played proper cricket shots.
Eoin Morgan might’ve thought about potentially opening with Jos Buttler and it wouldn’t have been the worst shout because he’s a player who can score at a strike-rate of above 200 even when there are five fielders on the boundary.
But Morgs probably wanted to make the most of having Jos at back-end of the chase if needed, that’s a key spot. And you want to keep your batters in the position where they will be playing for most of the tournament.
It was an awesome England performance – very professional, clinical and ruthless. It was a really good display with the ball to restrict West Indies to 212 and that set the tone.
Pre-game, it was being billed as a battle of the pacemen, so to see the English bowlers hitting consistently good lengths was great.
Jofra [Archer] and Chris [Mark Wood] got going together, while Ben Stokes can hit 145kph as well which is so exciting to watch. You always feel like something will happen with that trio’s pace and a wicket is just round corner.
There will be a bit of a nervous wait for news on Eoin Morgan’s injuries ahead of the Afghanistan game on Tuesday.
In an ideal world, England will want to play their best team and get as close to qualifying for the semi-finals as they can. But it’s a long tournament and if there’s any risk involved with playing them, they won’t take it.
It doesn’t matter that England will be considered heavy favourites for the Afghanistan contest – you prepare in the same way as any game, make sure you’re ready for their bowlers and keep yourselves on your toes.
Morgs and the coaches will make sure there are no signs of complacency and it’s about trying not to think of opposition as a lesser nation because then you get in trouble – just play it like any other match.
We’ve already seen some great catches in this World Cup from the likes of Stokes and Sheldon Cottrell but in our match against West Indies on Thursday, Fran Wilson took the best live catch I’ve ever seen.
I couldn’t stop watching it the morning after – I saw someone had superimposed a cape on Fran on Twitter, which was fitting.
It was absolutely outstanding and everyone has been asking me about it, which is an amazing sign – moments like that go viral and it’s a great advert for women’s cricket.
This column was first published in the International Cricket Council media zone.
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