A couple of years ago, Alastair Cook explained the individual goal that kept him ticking during his England career. “In my opinion, you have to have something which is attainable as a personal thing, which doesn’t go above the team,” he told the BBC. “I used to run at five o’clock in the morning. The reason I ran at tough times was because I wanted to score 10,000 Test runs.”
It took him a decade to get there, at 31 the youngest to do it, the first Englishman to the mark, prompting a look at what would come next. With time on his side and a healthy Test calendar for England, could he overtake Sachin Tendulkar, clear at the top with 15,921 runs? “There is no reason he couldn’t if his heart is still in it,” said Trevor Bayliss, Cook’s head coach at the time. But 10,000 was the figure, the early morning wake-up call. “I scored 10,000 runs and something just changed a little bit. I didn’t have another goal to get.” Cook retired from international cricket two years later.
That something within Joe Root is still going. It’s three years now since Root reached his 10,000 mark, at the same age as Cook, right to the number of days. Again came the discussion of the Tendulkar record, and it popped up last year when he overtook Cook as England’s leading run-scorer. An article in the Telegraph predicted when he would get there, placing its bet on the summer of 2028. But the game often makes promises it can’t keep, form and desire capable of disappearing at any moment.
Root has both at the moment. Form came at Lord’s with his 37th Test hundred, and desire was present when he restarted his innings in Manchester on Friday, 11 runs to his name. Mohammed Siraj was on from Jimmy Anderson’s end, Jasprit Bumrah at the other. Siraj had the ball scuttling and leaping, while Bumrah had the match-up on his side. No bowler has removed Root more times in Test cricket.
Run through the quick’s 11 dismissals of the batter and you mostly find the ball outside off, jagging both ways to entice the prod or slap the pad. The main outlier is Root’s down-with-the-kids reverse scoop in Rajkot last year, straight to Yashasvi Jaiswal at second slip. This being Root, he hit a hundred in the next Test.
At Old Trafford, while Bumrah prompted leaves outside off, Siraj threatened with a leg-before shout, a wild play-and-miss, and a glove-rattler that caused confusion between Root and Ollie Pope, the running mix-up nearly accounting for the former. But the release brought history. With a punch for four off Bumrah, Root went level with Rahul Dravid in the leading Test run-scorers’ list. Three deliveries and two singles later, he was beyond Jacques Kallis, up to third. The numbers hit the big screen in the ground and the crowd clocked on. Root, leaning on his bat and looking a bit shy, offered a quick raised hand in acknowledgment.
Ricky Ponting, No 2, was still another 88 runs away. Go back five years and you would have guessed it to be something for another day, Root’s consistency not translating to centuries. But a flick down the leg side in the afternoon brought him his 21st Test hundred since the start of 2021, a tally that equals the career record of Andrew Strauss.
Do the milestones mean anything? These things can be dirty to discuss when it is the group that matters, “happy to help the team” the common refrain. Root is very much about the collective, with his words and demeanour. “I’m sure he knew what the number was [to go to No 2], but he’s not a guy who wants to shout about those things,” said Pope after play.
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“He’ll be driven to make it to No 1 but I think he just wants to keep playing as long as he can. The excitement he still has to play Test cricket – whenever we rock up at the start of the series, he’s always got the biggest smile on his face.”
The moment came shortly before tea, a single knocked behind point off Anshul Kamboj. The crowd stood up and serenaded him, while Ponting offered his congratulations on commentary. Root provided a smile, and then got on with it again. It’s just Tendulkar left, still more than 2,000 runs away. We’ll be counting, even if he isn’t.