Root: 'Guilt' at letting down Buttler is driving ODI resurgence

Joe Root says guilt at not being able to support Jos Buttler during his captaincy is driving the 34-year-old to continue in limited-overs cricket under Harry Brook.

On Sunday, Root became England's leading ODI runscorer, a feat capped with a career-best 166 not out to chase down a target of 309 in the second ODI against West Indies in Cardiff, sealing a series win in the process. It follows his ascension to the top of the English Test charts last October, when he moved beyond Sir Alastair Cook's tally of 12,742 in the first Test of the Pakistan tour.

Upon reaching 42, Root passed the previous highest of 6,957 achieved by Eoin Morgan. As impressive as Morgan's runscoring exploits were, his captaincy was legacy-defining, overseeing a white-ball revolution that sent England to the top of rankings, capped off by winning the 50-over World Cup in 2019.

Root, England's top-scorer at that tournament with 556 runs, was a vital cog in Morgan's machine. However, with priorities shifting, particularly in the final years of his own Test captaincy, he found himself playing less and less 50-over cricket. Even without the Test captaincy during Buttler's tenure, Root ended up playing just 25 of a possible 47 ODIs.

That included the dismal 2023 World Cup campaign, and an equally poor Champions Trophy earlier this year, which ended in Buttler's resignation. Those tournaments sandwiched a 2024 in which Root played no white-ball cricket for his country.

Now, with eight ODIs under his belt in 2025, and an 18th hundred in the bag, he is back to being at one with the format. And he admits his renewed drive comes from wanting to support Brook in the way he felt he had not with Buttler.

"I played a huge amount of cricket with Jos and almost felt guilty that I wasn't there for him throughout a lot of his tenure," Root said.

"And now that there's more chances and more opportunities to play ODI cricket, I want to be involved in that. I want play as much as I can for England and, if I'm going make the team better, then absolutely want to be there and involved in, in trying to do that.

"Whether that's helping in and around practice with the younger players as a senior bat, and sharing and expressing my experience with them to try and speed up their processes and their learnings. But also out on the field, I feel like I've still got a lot to give and there's a lot more runs in there. Hopefully knocks like that show that.

"Hopefully, this can be a team that is quite consistent and sticks together for a long period of time and we can start building something as a group together. It's what we did really well leading up to that 2019 World Cup. I don't think that counts for nothing."

Naturally, Brook was full of praise for Root, whose unbeaten 166 eclipsed the 146 for 7 that the rest of the team (plus extras) managed between them. It confirmed a first series victory as captain for the 26-year-old, achieved ahead of Tuesday's third and final ODI at the Kia Oval. It also eases qualifying automatically for 2027's ODI World Cup.

Root was similarly full of praise for his new skipper, particularly his work in the field to restrict West Indies to 308 all out. However, he could not resist a familiar jibe at his Yorkshire teammate's expense.

"He's still an idiot," joked Root. "As much as he's an idiot - and I can say that because I've known him forever - he's very cricket intelligent. He might not always be the most intelligent away from cricket, but he understands the game exceptionally well and that's why he's so consistent as a batter. I think that's what will make him a really good leader as well.

"You saw today, he might see the game slightly differently and he might do things differently, but it asks different questions of a batter. There was a phase in the game today where we had quite unusual fields, but they found it hard to rotate. It built pressure, it led to wickets and we ended up bowling them out."