The captain of the England cricket team, Alastair Cook, has lauded Joe Root for showing amazing calmness under pressure in England’s second innings in the second Ashes test match which was played at Lord’s.

Root played a tremendous knock of 180 runs in England’s second innings and helped his team set Australia a huge target of 583 runs.

The Australian team didn’t manage to get even close to that target and ended up getting bundled out for just 235 runs.
Talking to the reporters in the post match press conference, Cook said, “I was not surprised to see him bat like this. In his brief international career, he has already shown us a couple of times what he is capable of.”

“Joe has got amazing temperament. He is technically sound as well, but, it’s his temperament which makes him a special player.”
“He is a guy who plays according to the situation. If you need quick runs, he can up the ante as well.”

Not only did Root make big contribution with the bat, his performance with the ball was mighty impressive as well. He bowled 7 overs in the fourth innings of the match and dismissed two set Aussie batsmen.

When asked about Root’s bowling performance, Cook said, “He did surprise me a little bit with his bowling figures to be honest. I hadn’t expected him to bowl this impressively.”

When asked about the possibility of England whitewashing Australia in this series, Cook said, “These are early days in the series. It would not be sensible to start thinking about the whitewash at this point of time.”

“We have worked very hard in the last couple of weeks and we need to keep doing that. We can’t relax even a bit.”
The third test match of the series will start from 1st of August at Old Trafford, Manchester.