The England cricket team had an excellent first innings with both bat and ball against Sri Lanka in the first Test at Galle.

After skittling out the home side for just 135, England posted 421 on the board with skipper Joe Root contributing 228 of those. Recording his 4th double century in Test cricket, Root became the first England batsman to score two of those as captain of the team.

Joe Root has always been criticized for his below-par conversion rate post getting to a half-century. In fact, the last ten times he went past the 50-run mark in Test cricket since August 2019, he couldn't get to three digits in eight of those.

However, the two times he did get there, he registered a double hundred. He spoke about getting past that barrier in Sri Lanka at the end of Day 3 of the first Test.

SL v ENG 2021: Joe Root reveals "change in mindset" after his masterclass at Galle

Root said, "It feels great [to score double hundred] and good to be in the position we are after losing the toss. The key to it was to have a very clear message and a method to play each individual bowler and try and minimise the risk as much as possible on a surface like that."

He also went on to say that he did make some small changes to his batting technique and learned from his peers like the 'unbelievable' New Zealand skipper Kane Williamson.

The 30-year-old said, "I’ve changed quite a few things. Tried to get more rhythm into my batting, trying to find triggers and things that might just give me a bit of rhythm to things. I’ve spent lot of time with myself, that’s the advantage of Covid, there’s been so much time to look back, watch other cricket around the world."

"You’ve got to learning off your peers, it’s important to do that. The way Kane [Williamson] has been batting has been unbelievable. We’ve also got some fantastic coaches we well, trying to tap into Jacques Kallis, Paul Collingwood, Graham Thorpe. I’m very fortunate to have those guys to learn from," he added.