England skipper Joe Root to continue ‘Bazball’ tactics with tweaks

England’s new Test skipper Joe Root has said that the current side coached by Stephen Fleming will keep faith with the aggressive 'Bazball' tactics used by his predecessor Ben Stokes and previous coach Brendon McCullum.

Following a major overhaul after England's Test series defeat to New Zealand in June, the 35-year-old revealed that he is only planning to tweak the approach of Stokes and McCullum rather than start from scratch.

Root will lead England in the forthcoming Test series against Pakistan, with Fleming arriving to replace McCullum later this year.

"It'll be trying to continue some of the good things we have done over that period (since 2022) and not finding ourselves back to where we were before Baz and Ben took over," Root said in an ECB interview on Saturday.

"Evolving and tweaking things to get us to where we want to be and really competing against the top nations consistently over a long period of time.

"The wrong thing to do would be to completely rip everything up that we've done over the last four years.

"There's so much good stuff that Ben and Brendon did and changed the way we look at the game and see the game."

McCullum inspired Stokes to make England play with flair and power, but that approach did not work against Australia and India and England's recent clash with New Zealand was marred by issues involving players drinking, with Stokes and Gus Atkinson left out of the second Test against the Black Caps after breaking a team curfew in a nightclub incident.

Root, a more conservative figure than the brash Stokes, plans to be stricter in his time as captain, without indicating if that will include off-field behaviour.

"I've benefitted hugely from that as a player so to think we have to start all over again would be wrong. But there are areas we want to sharpen up a little bit and become a little bit sterner with," he said.

"The last four years is the most fun I've had in cricket and most of that is down to the way they got me to see the game.

"Clearly the last little while is fresh in everyone's minds but you're looking at a four-year period where we did a lot of good things."