One batter who has defied any notion of slump in the last four years in the world of cricket is England's run-machine Joe Root. The 33-years-old is riding on the form of his lifetime for quite some time now.
Root is so confident about his batting that he played an audacious reverse-ramp shot to bring up his 36th Test century against New Zealand in Wellington.
In fact, since the start of the 2021, Root has been unstoppable, notching up as many as 19 Test hundreds and breaking an array of records on the way.
No records in Test cricket is out of reach for the Englishman right now. He is already the highest run-getter for England and fifth overall on the list of most runs in Test history.
At 12,886 runs, Root is just 492 runs away from Australian great Ricky Ponting, who is second in the list behind India legend Sachin Tendulkar. The kind of form he is in, Root will soon surpass the likes of Jacques Kallis and Rahul Dravid -- the other players ahead of him -- by next year.
Only Tendulkar will be in front of Root, so how safe is the batting maestro's record of 15,921 runs, which looked unbeatable when the Indian retired more than a decade ago in 2013?
Root is just over 3,000 runs behind Tendulkar at the moment, but he has the form to give the indication that he can and will have a go at the record. Tendulkar’s 51 Test century record is also not far away either.
After the Sachin-Ponting era, the next Fab Four in cricket, especially in Tests, was Root, India’s Virat Kohli, Australia’s Steve Smith and New Zealand’s Kane Williamson. But the English batter has left the other three far behind in the last four years.
Take for example, in comparison to Root's 19 Test hundreds since 2021, Williamson is the second best at nine centuries. Smith has added just six hundreds to his tally and Kohli just three during the period. If we take the overall cricketing world too, outside the Fab Four, nobody has scored more than eight hundreds during this period.
Williamson remained second best among the century-makers during the period, followed by Harry Brooks at eight. After that Sri Lanka's Dimuth Karunaratne, Australia's Usman Khawaja and Marnus Labuschagne have notched up seven centuries each.
Along with the century records, Root has amassed 5,063 runs at an average of 56.26 since the start of 2021 alone. No other batters have managed to touch 3,000 mark, with Karunaratne a distant second with 2,613 runs.
En-route to this massive run accumulation, Root has become the highest scorer in fourth innings in Test history, surpassing Tendulkar's record of 1,625 runs. Root now has 1,630 runs in the fourth innings in Tests.
He also joined the elite list of players to complete a century of 50-plus scores in Tests, becoming only the fourth batter ever. Here too, Tendulkar leads the list with 119 fifty-plus scores, followed by Jacques Kallis and Ricky Ponting at 103 each. Root now has 100 such scores, 36 hundreds and 64 fifties. So, this record also won't last long for sure!
With 1,470 runs already this year, he is also on the verge of becoming only the second batter ever to amass 1500-plus runs in a calendar year twice, a feat only Ricky Ponting has achieved, in 2003 and 2005. Root previously crossed the 1,500-run threshold in 2021 during his exceptional run of form.
Root vs Kohli vs Williamson vs Smith - Since 2021- Root: M 54 | R 5063 | HS 262 | Av. 56.25 | 19x100s | 15x50s
- Kohli: M 33 | R 1845 | HS 186 | Av. 33.54 | 3x100s | 8x50s
- Williamson: M 22 | R 2199 | HS 238 | 59.43 | 9x100s | 5x50s
- Smith: M 36 | R 2467 | HS 200* | Av. 44.85 | 6x100s | 12x50s
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