Joe Root returns as England captain at Headingley for Pakistan Test
Joe Root returns as England captain at Headingley to lead the three-match Test series against Pakistan on Wednesday, having already captained 65 Tests, an England record.
Headingley is the venue where Ben Stokes produced his most famous innings, and England begin a new era there without Stokes after his four-year captaincy; Stokes inherited a side that had won one of 17 Tests and left with two wins in 10. The England setup is unsettled off the field: Brendon McCullum has been sacked as Test coach and replaced by Stephen Fleming, but Fleming is not yet in post, Marcus Trescothick is interim coach and McCullum remains involved as white-ball head.
Root has acknowledged unresolved business from his first spell as captain and returns after a five-year initial stint that he has said left him broken; in 2017 he was the third-youngest player in the XI, while in 2026, at the age of 35, he is comfortably the oldest. In his earlier run as skipper he won 26 of his first 47 matches, a 55% success rate, and he has compared with other recent captains whose Test winning percentages were recorded as Stokes 54%, Michael Vaughan 51% and Mike Brearley 58%.
There are concerns about how the captaincy might affect Root's batting: his average while captain is listed as 46.7 versus a career mark of 53.3, with a notably poor run during 2019 when he averaged 37. In 2021, amid England's struggles, Root scored 1,708 Test runs — the most by any England batter in a calendar year — and he later said that batting, being in the middle, "was the only time he got any peace."
Statistically, Root has remained England's leading run-scorer since the start of the Bazball era, with almost 1,000 more Test runs than any other batter in that period, and he has moved to second on the all-time list of run-scorers, with Sachin Tendulkar "now in his sights," a subplot mentioned for his second spell as captain.
England arrive at the series with selection and balance questions: an opener and wicketkeeper to sort, a makeshift number three, no obvious all-round option and no world-class spinner. They begin as favourites against a Pakistan side that has not won a series in England in 30 years and will be without their captain in Leeds, the injured Babar Azam; Pakistan have played more Tests in July and August, drawing 1-1 with the West Indies, and possess bowlers such as Mohammad Abbas and Sajid Khan who have troubled England previously.
The fixture list that follows this Pakistan series is demanding: England face winter tours to South Africa and Bangladesh, a one-off pink-ball match against Australia — who were defeated by Bangladesh — ahead of the Ashes next summer, and a trip to India in early 2028, creating a challenging first 18 months of Root's second tenure.
Root has set behavioural expectations for his squad, telling players to "Be good role models and good human beings," and England begin the series against Pakistan at Headingley on Wednesday.
