Joe Root now stamping his mark as England chase first Test tour triumph since 2015-16

For England and Joe Root’s captaincy in particular this promises to be a landmark week.

Victory against Sri Lanka here at the Pallekele Stadium would not only seal a rare away Test series success but offer yet more evidence that Root, 18 months after succeeding Alastair Cook as captain, is finally stamping his mark on the side following years of stagnation.

Root started his tenure in the summer of 2017 with a creditable 3-1 series victory against a South Africa team who started that English summer ranked No1 in the world.

West Indies were also beaten 2-1 on home soil that year, albeit after a series-squaring victory for the tourists at Headingley that laid bare technical and mental flaws in England’s make-up that were brutally exposed by Australia and, to a lesser extent, New Zealand last winter.

Five of those seven Tests in Australasia were lost as England took their wretched run of winless overseas Tests to a record 13.

However, since breaking that horror sequence with a crushing 211-run victory in Galle last week, England finally have a chance to redeem themselves with a first Test series win away from home since beating South Africa 2-1 in the winter of 2015-16.

That stands as England’s sole overseas success since Cook won his first series as Test captain in India six years ago. Root, who made his debut in the final match of that 2012 series in Nagpur, is keenly aware opportunity knocks in Kandy this week and knows sealing the series would be a huge step forward for his team.

“It would be extremely important for this group of players,” he admitted. “It feels like we’re going in a really strong direction at the moment, we keep developing and growing and learning as a team. That’s the temptation — you see the carrot dangled in front of us and you start looking way too far ahead.

“Without going into every cliche in the book we have to stay in the game as long as possible. You can lose a Test match in a session but it’s very difficult to win one. It’s about being as skilful as we were in Galle for long periods of time and being as ruthless as we were on occasions there, too.”

Perhaps it should be no surprise that Root, speaking before training today, was so cagey over revealing his team for the Second Test, starting tomorrow, given the stakes are so high.

Yet later he showed his own ruthless streak by naming an unchanged XI from Galle that had no place for a fit-again Jonny Bairstow, a player he has grown up with at Yorkshire and who will no doubt be upset at being overlooked. The wicketkeeper missed the opening Test with an ankle injury and promptly saw Ben Foakes, his replacement, score a century on what Jos Buttler yesterday described as a “dream debut”.

However, Bairstow missing out even as a specialist batsman is another sign that England are making huge strides in Test cricket.

They have opted to retain three spinners here once they saw the dryness of a pitch that has been prepared to assist the home bowlers.

And Root was keen to stress that when in doubt he expects his players to always take the positive option.

“I think you have to adjust, you have to look to be as adaptable as possible and that’s something that was a real strength of ours throughout that First Test,” he said.

“I think that’ll be exactly the same here but, ultimately, I want us to take the positive option if we’re unsure at any stage. I want us to continue keep taking the game to the opposition. Ultimately, it’s about how quickly we can adapt to get in control of the game once we know how the surface plays.”

That mindset was evident when England announced today that Ben Stokes would be taking over the problematic No3 position for this Test.

It is a role nobody has been able to fill successfully since Jonathan Trott vacated it one match into the 2013-14 Ashes series in Australia.

Yet with Sri Lanka expected to utilise spin from the start of the innings — and Stokes’s vast improvement playing the turning ball over the past two years or so — it’s a call that makes sense. Moeen Ali, press-ganged into the role for the final Test of the English summer against India and the first here in Sri Lanka, is much better suited to batting lower down the order.

Hopefully Stokes, who made a quick-fire 62 in England’s second-innings in Galle from No5, adapts well to the promotion and offers the top order a bit more stability than it has had in recent years. Root’s unwillingness to bat at three himself could be seen as a major weakness of his captaincy. After all he is undoubtedly England’s best batsman.

Yet perhaps he has shown enough as captain over the past few months to be cut a little slack and if his team win this series it would be hard to argue that England are not moving forward under his leadership.