International sport is hard and it gets difficult at times to keep picking yourself back up, England captain Joe Root told BBC Radio.
England may not have been able to square the just-concluded two-Test series against New Zealand but a big plus for them was skipper Joe Root’s return to form.
The 28-year-old entered the series with poor form, having registered three scores of zero in the Ashes series against Australia earlier in the year. But he got back to his best in the second Test against the Kiwis with a masterful double-century.
“It’s hard sometimes to keep picking yourself back up, but you do,” Root said on Tuesday. “It’s just part and parcel of playing international sport. You’re not going to have it your way all the time. If you want to be around and you want to be successful then you have to keep coming back from difficult days.”
Root, whose batting average when captaining is much lesser than his career average, reflected on how he motivated himself during his lean patch.
“Every now and again, through a long career, you’re going to have periods where things don’t go your way,” he said. “So you have to have an element of resilience about your approach and how you go about things in practice. I’ve managed to stick to that and keep believing in myself. It always felt like it was just a matter of time, I told myself to keep going and keep putting myself in those situations.”
New Zealand won the series 1-0 but the two-match rubber was not part of the ongoing ICC World Test Championship.