England’s Test captain Joe Root returned to his best form with the bat, as he played a mind-blowing innings with his near-impeccable technique against spin to put his team in firm control of the ongoing first Test against Sri Lanka at Galle International Stadium.
Scoring all around the Galle wicket, Root notched up his 18th Test hundred to help England take a lead of 286 runs in the first innings against the struggling Islanders.
The right-hander played a masterful knock of 228 from 321 balls with 18 boundaries and one six – his first Test hundred in last 13 months, as he was involved in a 173-run stand for the 4th wicket with debutant Dan Lawrence who made 73 against Sri Lanka on Friday, January 15.
His belligerent hundred would have certainly silenced critics who have questioned his ability to convert the fifties into hundreds with his 228, now the highest individual score in Tests for England in Sri Lanka. He also became the first Englishman to have scored multiple Test tons on Lankan soil both as player and captain as well as the first non-Asian captain to score a Test ton at the Galle Stadium.
Unbeaten on 168 overnight, much-relieved Root revealed that a change in mindset played a role in his brilliant knock in the ongoing Galle Test.
Root told reporters about his failure to regularly turn half-centuries into three figures: “In the last two years I have made too much of a big deal about it in my own mind, which has been to my detriment.”
The 30-year-old continued, “So I tried to get it out of my mind and just get into one-on-one contests with each bowler and choose the right shots. My shot selection was good today, I managed to pick the right ball the majority of the time. It is about doing that more often.”
Root has made a half-century on 67 occasions in Tests but has managed to convert only 18 of those into hundreds and he admitted it was frustrating, adding: “I have been desperate to convert the 50s into big scores, but when I do get a 100 I generally make it count.”
He signed off, “It felt like a long time coming but the aim now is to try and make this one count and drive the first innings (total) as high as we can to bat once in this game. There has already been prodigious turn, so this Test is only going one way. We need to be ruthless and drive home the advantage.”
(With Reuters Inputs)
