Joe Root Breaks Alastair Cook Run Record: Joe Root scored a four to become the highest run-scorer in Test cricket in the first England vs Pakistan match en route to scoring a brilliant century.
The England Cricket Team is currently playing Pakistan in the first of three Test matches. Today is Day 3 of the match that is being played in the Multan Cricket Stadium. It was the home side that won the toss and decided to bat first on this flat deck. In the first inning, the Men in Green scored 556, with Abdullah Shafique and Salman Ali Agha scoring 100s and captain Shan Masood scoring 150.
And while England captain Ollie Pope was dismissed for a duck, the team is currently in a good spot. At a loss of three wickets, the English have crossed the 350-run mark. The hero of the inning has been Joe Root, who has scored his third ton in as many Tests.
But what has been a lot more newsworthy occurrence on the day is that Root has now broken the record of former England captain Alastair Cook for the most runs in Test cricket for their country.
Joe Root Breaks Alastair Cook Run Record
Going into this game, Joe was just 71 runs behind Cook’s record of 12472 runs. He walked out to bat quite early, in the second over itself as Pope was dismissed. The English great then went on to dismantle the Pakistan bowling. While both teams are playing on a flat track, Root just took apart the opposition’s bowling like no other batter.
In the 42nd over, the 33-year-old was batting alongside Ben Duckett. On the final ball of the over, he hit pacer Aamir Jamal for a four with a beautiful straight drive. This was the shot that took him past Alastair and made Joe Root the highest run scorer for England in Test cricket.
This record becomes even more impressive when we see that Root is only playing his 147th Test match, compared to Alastair Cook’s 161 Tests in his career. Now playing on 127 not-out, the Englishman is currently on 12527 Test runs. This is the highest tally in the format for any active player. Steve Smith is second on that list with 9685 runs in 109 Test matches. India’s Virat Kohli is in third with 8947 runs in 115 matches.
Root also has 35 centuries in Test cricket, which is also the most for an English batter and puts him sixth on the list of all-time test batters.
More importantly, Joe Root is the only batter who can realistically challenge Sachin Tendulkar’s record of most runs in Test cricket. The Master Blaster scored a whopping 15921 runs in 200 matches with an average of 53.78. Joe is about 3400 runs behind. Currently, fifth on the list of all-time run scorers, Root will now have Rahul Dravid’s 12388 runs record in his sight, crossing, which will put him in fourth.
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