Root's twin centuries at Lord's has taken his century tally to 34 in Tests.
England batter Joe Root is scaling a new high every time he bats in Test cricket. In the ongoing second Test between England and Sri Lanka, being played at the Lord’s, Root overtook Alastair Cook to become the most century maker from the England team.
This was also Joe Root’s second ton of the match. Following his 206-ball 143 in the opening innings against Sri Lanka in the match, Root scored 103 off 121 in the second innings, which helped his side put up a target of 483 runs for Sri Lanka to win the Test.
The twin centuries have taken the England batter's career tally to 34 tons in Tests, putting Root on par with Younis Khan, Sunil Gavaskar, Jacques Kallis, Mahela Jayawardena, and Brian Lara in the list of most tons.
The 34th hundred also took Root's career run tally to 12377 runs, leaving him only 96 runs away from not only making it to the elusive top five in the all-time list but also surpassing Cook for the most-ever runs by an England batter in Test history.
Thanks to Joe Root’s century-making spree in Tests in recent years, discussions have started about whether the England batter can break Sachin Tendulkar's record of 15921 runs, the most ever by a batter in Test cricket.
However, when asked about the prospect in a video published by England Cricket, he focused on scoring runs to help his side win matches rather than personal achievements.
“I just want to play, and try, and do my bit for the team and score the runs as many as I can and see where we get to. But there’s no better feeling I mean, it’s obviously amazing when you score 100, you’d be lying if you said it wasn’t, a big part of why you started playing the game and what you love about it.
But there’s no better feeling than winning a Test match. So the more, it can affect games, and the more you can add to the team, the greater it is. So, that will be the main focus. And hopefully, more days like this will come with that mentality,” Joe Root said in an England Cricket video.
“But there’s no better feeling than winning a Test match. So the more, it can affect games, and the more you can add to the team, the greater it is. So, that will be the main focus. And hopefully, more days like this will come with that mentality,” he added.
In the last three years, Root has 17 hundreds and 4554 runs in 48 Tests at an average of 56.92. Following this, Root has six more Tests this year to add to his century and run total. England will play three Tests each against Pakistan and three more against New Zealand.