CARDIFF: Joe Root insisted on Wednesday that England had both the right captain and the right approach to win their one-day series with India and succeed at the World Cup.

Former England spinner Graeme Swann said on Tuesday that the side “do not have a cat in hell’s chance” of winning next year’s World Cup in Australia and New Zealand unless they add more firepower to their top-order batting.

He also urged England captain Alastair Cook to give up playing one-day cricket, arguing the opener’s style was ill-suited to the modern limited overs game were big-hitting at the top of the order is considered essential.

It was a view backed up by former England captain Michael Vaughan, who also told BBC Radio’s Test Match Special: “England are looking too much at these new white balls. The other teams have gone power at the top and all the way through.

“India have got power strikers all the way down. South Africa, Australia are all exactly the same. It’s a completely different era because of Twenty20.”

England have yet to win the World Cup in nearly 40 years of trying since staging the first of the tournament’s 10 editions in 1975.

Both Swann and Vaughan feared the addition of dynamic opener Alex Hales — who would have made his debut in the India series opener in Bristol on Monday had the match not been a total washout — had come too late to bolster England’s World Cup chances.

But England batsman Root, speaking ahead of Wednesday’s second One-day International in a five-match series with the world champions in Cardiff, was having none of it.

“We’ve got guys like [Eoin] Morgan and [Jos] Buttler down the order who, as you’ve seen, can win games on their own,” said Root.

“We’re in a good place, and this series will be a good judge of that,” the Yorkshireman added.

Cook resisted calls from Vaughan and others to quit as England Test captain earlier in the season and was vindicated by a 3-1 series win over India in the longer format.

And Root said the team were as much behind Cook when it came to 50-over fixtures as they were in Tests.

“He’s our leader in one-day cricket as well as Tests; he’s done well over a number of years, and we all back him,” said Root. “He’s a fantastic player and has got all of our support.”

The middle-order batsman said contrasting approaches from the openers would serve England well.

“His style complements players like Alex Hales, and we hope that can be shown in this series,” Root added.

Hales scored England’s first Twenty20 century when he made 116 not out from 64 balls against Sri Lanka at the World Twenty20 in Bangladesh in March.

“Alex is an explosive player, very exciting to watch — and we’re all looking forward to seeing him do stuff,” said Root.

“I think guys have been picked because they’re very capable of making big scores in one-day series. I don’t think there’s much of a problem with the batting.”

Published in Dawn, August 27th, 2014