Joe Root is at that stage of his career where the mountains of runs he has scored start reaching record territory even if his score in a particular innings may not be of note. The former England captain fell for just 29 off 45 balls to Mohammed Siraj on a feisty Day 2 of the fifth Test against India.
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However, that was enough for him to go past Sachin Tendulkar and take second place in the list of batters with most runs in Test matches played at home. Root’s career tally went to 7224 runs with that 29, while Tendulkar had scored 7216. The only player above Joe Root is Australia great Ricky Ponting, who had scored 7578 runs in Tests played at home.
It is an interesting reversal of the big record that Root got closer to at Old Trafford during the fourth Test. Root had gone past Ricky Ponting’s career tally of Test runs to sit second in the list of highest run scorers of all time in the longest format. The only player above him, quite famously, is Sachin Tendulkar who had scored 15,921 runs in his prolific career of 200 Tests.
Root, meanwhile, now sits on 13,438 runs in 158 Tests at an average of 51.09 after the innings on Friday. Ponting finished his career on 13,378 runs in 168 Tests at an average of 51.85 with 41 centuries and 62 half-centuries. Root went past Ponting during an innings in which he scored 150 in 248 balls in England’s second innings at Old Trafford. Over the course of the innings, the 34-year-old went first went past Rahul Dravid (13,288) and then Jacquest Kallis (13,289) on the list of highest ever Test run scorers. Root then went past Ponting after raising his century.
Root was at the centre of one of many flare-ups during the England innings on Day 2 of the fifth Test. He got into a heated argument with Prasidh Krishna, who chirped at him throughout the 22nd over after Root walked in with Zak Crawley having fallen off the first ball. Root guided the last ball past gully for a four after which Prasidh said something again. This time, Root retaliated.
Umpire Kumar Dharmasena then had a long chat with Prasidh and India captain Shubman Gill and Rahul seemed to walk in right at the end of it. “What, do you want us to be quiet?” Rahul asked Dharmasena. The Sri Lankan umpire tried to reason with him: “Will you like any bowler come and talk to you like that? No, you can’t do that. No Rahul, we should not go that way.”
“What do you want us to do? Just bat and ball and go home?” said Rahul in reply, which Dharmasena didn’t really appreciate. “We’ll discuss that at the end of the match. You can’t talk like that,” he said.
