5 takeaways from Joe Root's first captaincy stint

#1 A modern leader for the modern game

Root certainly is a master of creative field placings

At Chennai in 2016, Karun Nair was trashing England on his way to a historic triple century. Cook, England's then captain tried several options but failed to prevent Nair's carnage.

He then tried cramping Nair by barraging him with short-deliveries. He secured the square boundaries by placing men on the boundaries and in that process had to keep mid-on region vacant.

Nair, however, used the short-arm jab and the pull shot to place the ball in the mid-on region and still accumulated runs. Root, standing at one corner in the field asked Cook to move the fielder from mid-off to mid-on and keep mid-off.

He explained to his captain that playing a short-ball to mid-on is relatively easier than playing it to mid-off. Cook obliged and it halted Nair's pace of run-scoring.

This incident revealed Root's knowledge of the game and his thinking process. In the Test series against South Africa, he was creative with his fielding and was constantly thinking from the batsman's perspective. He kept the batsman guessing by adding one more man in the slips or by intentionally keeping a specific area in the field vacant.

Modern batsmen with their big bats and powerful arms can easily pierce the fielders and hence the bowling captain must be creative with their plans. And Root certainly is a master of creative field placings.