After breaching 10k club, can Joe Root eclipse Tendulkar?

NEW DELHI: On Sunday, as Joe Root flicked Tim Southee to bring up his 26th Test ton on the pristine Lord’s baize, a career that took off ten years back in Nagpur dust reached a definitive landmark.

Mt 10k has been tamed 13 times before, and each conquest is accompanied by a unique context. For Root, it is an affirmation of his status as the world’s best Test batter, irrespective of what ICC rankings may tell.

The infectious smile is still intact, even though a taxing captaincy stint has taken some toll on his boyish looks. The charm of his willow, though, remains stronger than ever. Earmarked for impending success since the day he walked out at the fall of Jonathan Trott on a December afternoon a decade back, Root went on to quietly establish himself as one of the best in his generation.

He was the last entrant to the ‘Fab Four’ club—Root made his Test debut after Kane Williamson (2010), Steven Smith (2010), and Virat Kohli (2011)—but is the only active batter to amass 10,000 Test runs.

It must, however, be noted that the England batter has played more Tests (118) than Kohli (101), Smith (85), and Williamson (87) and has the lowest average in Fab Four (49.57).

Still only 31 and in the best form of his career, and considering the amount of Test cricket England play, he may actually gun for Sachin Tendulkar’s magical tally of 15,921 runs. Former Australia skipper Mark Taylor certainly thinks so.

“Root has a minimum of five years left in him, so I think Tendulkar’s record is very achievable,” Taylor told Sky Sports.

“Root is batting as well as I have ever seen him bat over the last 18 months to two years. He is in the prime of his career, so there is 15,000 runs-plus for him if he stays healthy,” he added.

Still, Root is not about plain numbers alone. Perhaps the only world-class, all-condition batter in a team prone to batting failures — remember his majestic double ton in Chennai last year? — Root has seen English batting go from the halcyon days of Alastair Cook, Kevin Pietersen, Jonathan Trott, and Ian Bell to the incertitude of Dom Sibley, Zak Crawley, and Ollie Pope. It’s a measure of his sublime skills and mental toughness that at a time when England were in a freefall, managing a solitary win in Root’s last 17 Tests as skipper, his batting soared like never before.

Since the beginning of 2021, Root turned a new leaf in his career; 1708 runs came from 15 Tests last year, including six tons. No one scored more runs or tons; the next best, Rohit Sharma, was 802 runs behind; the next Englishman, Rory Burns (503 runs), was 15 rungs below. This year, Root has already scored three hundreds in six Tests. It’s an exciting time for Root also because he is suddenly, once again, free of the burden that captaincy. “(Getting to 10,000 Test runs) is a special day and one he thoroughly deserves after everything he has been through the last couple of years. He must have felt like the weight of the world was on his shoulders,” former England captain Nasser Hussain said.