It feels like only yesterday that Joe Root walked out to the middle in Nagpur, met Kevin Pietersen with an upbeat “Eh up, lad, how’s it going?”, and calmly opened his account with a crisply driven three through the covers. England fancied they had a good ’un on their hands, although how good was still to be established.
Twelve years on – a passage of time barely discernible from Root’s boyish looks and sunny disposition – the going, like the answer to that latter question, was great. Just 48 hours after matching Alastair Cook’s tally of 33 Test centuries for England, Root claimed the record outright, his second of the match lighting up a gloomy third day at Lord’s and putting a series win over Sri Lanka within touching distance.
There have been more taxing hundreds among this remarkable haul; days when Root has had to get the shovel out and dig England out of a hole. And it is true that the third innings of a Test match, when a massive lead has already been established and the follow-on eschewed, can often feel short on jeopardy as spectators wait for the final equation to be set and the start of a victory charge with the ball.
But as the public filtered out of Lord’s on Saturday evening, England having reduced Sri Lanka to 53 for two in their unlikely pursuit of 483 to level the series, no one was talking down what they had witnessed, other than a fair few grumbles about the bad light that forced the players off at 5.05pm. Two hours earlier Root had delivered an ‘I was there’ moment for them when, with 98 to his name and a short-ball plan in place, he stepped to leg and cut Lahiru Kumara through the off side for four.
Cook was among those looking on from the Lord’s media centre, more than happy to crown Root as “quite simply England’s greatest”. The former opener will soon have to make way as the country’s highest run-scorer in Test cricket, too, with Root, last man out for 103 in a total of 251, needing 96 more to eclipse his 12,472 runs. Perhaps this will come at the Oval next week; a neat way to bookend a Test summer that began with England’s leading wicket-taker, Jimmy Anderson, exiting the stage.
In his current form, there is every chance. Since that third Test against India in February, when his reverse scooped demise triggered a series-defining collapse and an outcry with it, Root has compiled 884 runs in 12 innings at an average of 88.4 and in gimlet-eyed, albeit easy-on-the-eye fashion. The reverse scoop came out here – fresh air met when he was on 69 – but that day in Rajkot has increasingly felt like a pivot point in the 33-year-old’s relationship with so-called Bazball.
Root is too selfless a cricketer to get full-blown tunnel vision, but his hunger since has seldom felt greater. Following that crucial 143 on day one, this was the first time Root has made a century in both innings of a Test and by doing so at Lord’s, where feats seem to take on an even greater significance, he joined an elite club that featured George Headley (106 & 107 in 1939), Graham Gooch (333 & 123 in 1990) and Michael Vaughan (103 & 101* in 2004). Root also went past the latter pair for Test centuries in NW8 by turning a joint-record six into an outright record seven.
And while England broke Sri Lanka on the second day through Gus Atkinson’s century and 10 quick wickets, there was a wee bit still to do when Root arrived in the morning. Ben Duckett had fallen to a surprise relay catch at slip for 24, and when Ollie Pope slashed an uppercut to deep point on 17, England were 69 for three and led by 300. The record Test run chase at Lord’s may be the 342 that West Indies (344 for one) knocked off in 1984, but in the County Championship it is the 472 that Middlesex reeled in 10 years ago; a day when Root himself was captaining Yorkshire.
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England’s desire for rapid runs explained some of the dismissals but while others came and went – Harry Brook was next highest scorer with 37 – Root ticked along in an unhurried yet crisp fashion, such that, coming in 111 balls, it was still the fastest of his Test hundreds. Bar one early slice through vacant slip, this was another clinic, spinner Prabath Jayasuriya toyed with at times and Sri Lanka’s seamers, while dutifully thundering in to deliver a short-ball plan, still pulled with authority.
After Root had navigated his way to three-figures with the tail, stand-in skipper Pope kept popping out on to the pavilion balcony to ask his head coach, Brendon McCullum, about the declaration. But Root’s eventual dismissal made this cuckoo clock impression irrelevant, bringing tea and then the start of Sri Lanka’s attempt to climb Everest. Not that the man of the moment was done with the milestones.
Atkinson and Olly Stone nipped out the wickets of Pathum Nissanka and Nishan Madushka before the slightly farcical end to proceedings, and on both occasions the edges flew into the hands of Root at second slip. Root now has 200 Test catches to his name – 25 more than the next Englishman, Cook – and like the runs account that he opened in India all those years ago, expect a few more to come his way.