Joe Root is now the second leading run-scorer in the history of Test cricket, but where exactly does he rank in the game’s pantheon? Ben Gardner crunches the numbers.
Like a London bus, Joe Root waited nine months to rise a position in the all-time Test run-scorers list and then ticked off three in one go. Rahul Dravid and Jacques Kallis were seen off in the space of a couple of deliveries, and then 90 runs later, came Ricky Ponting. Punter himself was on air to watch himself be pushed into third place. “A magnificent moment in history,” Ponting said. “Just the one more to go now. About 2,500 runs behind, but the way that his career has gone over the last four or five years, there is absolutely no reason why not.”
Stats correct until end of Old Trafford Test
Catchin’ Sachin: When could it happen?
Let’s start with the obvious: To be in with a shot of breaking the world record for most Test runs, you both have to play a lot of Test matches, and score a lot of runs in those Test matches. Tendulkar is the only cricketer to play 200 Tests, and if Root is to overtake him, he is likely to need fewer games to do so. Root is currently ticking along at just over 85 runs per Test. Tendulkar made just under 80.
Root’s production has stepped up since 2020, his only full year as a Test cricketer without a century. Since the start of 2021 he has made 21 off his 38 hundreds, averaging 56.42 and scoring 93.1 runs per Test. Should Root carry on at between 85 and 93 runs per Test, he will need between 27 and 30 Tests to catch Tendulkar. After the Anderson-Tendulkar Trophy, England are scheduled to play five Tests in Australia, six Tests in the 2026 home summer, and six Tests in the 2026/27 winter. Then will come another home Ashes with one or two Tests before it, including a possible World Test Championship final, and then a five-Test tour of India. If Root plays all of those – he has missed just two England Tests since his debut – that would take him to 28 or 29 Tests, so at his career rate, he would be closing in on Tendulkar by the end of the 2027/28 winter, overtaking India’s favourite son in his own backyard.
From some corners, there’s been a certain sniffiness at the prospect of Tendulkar being knocked off his perch, references to the volume of cricket played by England and to the quality of bowling back in the day. Even putting these aside, questions about where exactly Root ranks will only grow as he closes in on the Little Master. He might end up with the most, but is there also a case for him to be the best after Bradman?
The longevity question
Longevity isn’t just about how many games you play, it’s about how those games are spread out. Tendulkar’s career spanned 24 years, nearly double Root’s current length. Tendulkar averaged eight and a third Tests per year, whereas Root averages over 12. Alastair Cook is top of this list, playing 13.4 Tests a year across his career. Younis Khan is bottom among the 10,000 Test run club, playing under seven Tests per annum.
There’s an argument that England’s flush Test schedule has allowed Root, and Cook before him, to cash in in their peak years to a greater extent than their rivals. But a busy calendar cuts both ways. Cook spoke often of having “to go back to the well” and found it had run dry before his 34th birthday. It is over 20 years since England last had a Test centurion aged 36 or older. Root will turn 37 at the end of 2027. If Root is to catch Sachin, he will almost certainly need to carry on long past his modern countrymen have tended to finish up.
Runs in results
While Root has Tendulkar beat when it comes to runs per Test, he trails behind when it comes to runs per innings. This is almost entirely down to Root playing in a draw-scarce era. Already he has featured in more result Tests than Tendulkar, and he averages slightly more in these games as well. Not all runs in draws are created equal, and they shouldn’t be discounted. There are famous rearguard efforts among Test cricket’s finest innings, and big first-innings hundreds without which a bore draw could have been a big defeat, but it is still a hint at the tougher conditions in which Root has had to bat. Australia’s Steve Waugh has the best record among the 10,000 Test run club in results, averaging 56.75, while Sunil Gavaskar, who made over 6,000 runs in draws, averaged just 38.51 in results.
The top seven average measure
What of the argument that Root has had it easier than his predecessors? Kevin Pietersen listed 22 bowlers from “20/25 years ago” and challenged his followers to name 10 modern bowlers to compare. Neither side of his comparison bears up to much scrutiny. His list had as contemporaries Shane Bond (Test debut: November 2001) and Curtly Ambrose (final Test: September 2000), and included Lance Klusener (80 Test wickets at 38). Bowlers Root has faced down include Jasprit Bumrah, Pat Cummins, Kagiso Rabada, Trent Boult, Mitchell Starc, Ravichandran Ashwin, Dale Steyn, Tim Southee, Nathan Lyon, Josh Hazlewood, Vernon Philander, Ravindra Jadeja, Mitchell Johnson, Mohammed Shami, Kemar Roach, Morne Morkel and Rangana Herath, all among the finest their nations have produced.
But we all can, and no doubt have, sat around naming guys and have the best time. A better indication of batting difficulty is how the other players in the games they have played in have fared. On this metric, Root scores highly. Top seven batters on both sides in Tests including Root have averaged 35.73. Only Smith, at 35.42, has a lower figure, corresponding to tougher batting conditions, among the 10,000 Test run club.
However, Smith has often played alongside an all-time great bowling attack featuring four names on the above list, tearing through opposition top sevens and bringing his top seven match average down. Australia’s top seven batters have averaged over 40 in Tests Smith has played in, while England’s in Root’s have averaged only 36.34. Lara, for so long West Indies’ sole fighter, comes out best by this measure, his teammates averaging 35.06.
Lara exposes a limitation of this metric. No doubt he faced some challenging batting conditions, but no doubt also, his teammates were a bit rubbish. Ponting faces the opposite problem. He and his top-seven teammates averaged an eye-watering 46.25, but he isn’t a lesser player for being part of one of the greatest teams of all time.
The beauty of this debate is that you can slice the numbers whichever way you like to make whichever argument you want. But a combination of both figures shows how highly Root ranks. Taking a ratio of his average to the averages of all top-seven batters in the games he has played and to his teammates in the top seven demonstrate how much better he has been than the rest. By the former, he’s in the top five among the 10,000 Test run club. By the latter, only the West Indies pair of Lara and Shivnarine Chanderpaul are ahead of him.
The holes in the record
The most oft-cited argument against Root’s claim to being in the very highest pantheon is his lack of a Test hundred in Australia. Of all countries in which Root has played more than two Tests, his average of 35.68 in Australia is the lowest. There is some mitigation here, when you consider the tours in question. In 2013/14, early in his career, he was one of many to suffer at the hands of Mitchell Johnson in the midst of one of the great bowling peaks as a top-class England side crumbled to dust. In 2017/18, shorn of Ben Stokes, he was quietly excellent, not quite making three figures, but managing five fifties in five Tests and averaging a shade under 50. In the final Test, fighting a fever, he alternated between retiring ill to nap in the dressing room and defying Cummins and co. as his side collapsed. His most recent tour was infamously null and voided by Stuart Broad, and while Australians will take umbrage at that assessment, there’s little question that the Covid bubbles took a toll. Root made three fifties in the first three Tests before tailing off.
Still, it’s a hole in the CV, and a big one considering Australia’s status as England’s arch-rivals. He will have one more go at cracking it this winter, and while batting conditions have got tougher in Australia since England’s last visit, this is the best placed Root has been to put up a bumper series.
Less talked about is that, Australia apart, Root’s record is excellent wherever he goes. Move up the list of averages per country and next is India, where he averages more than 45 runs per dismissal. Root averages more than 50 in six countries, and above 40 in another two. In the 10,000 Test run club, only Smith, Younis Khan and Tendulkar average 40 in nine or more countries. Tendulkar is the only batter to complete the full set, but has less standout territories, averaging north of 50 in one fewer country than Root.
Tendulkar apart, pretty much every batter has a hole of some sort in their record. Ponting averaged 26 in India. Kallis averaged 35 in England. If Root does crack Australia at the fourth attempt, it won’t put him in the same league as his competitors, it will elevate him above them.
The Bradman measure
The assumed knowledge in this debate is that Don Bradman is the greatest of all time. Across 80 innings he made 6,996 runs, 27 hundreds and averaged, infamously, 99.94. That 80-innings figure offers another comparison point, to see who, at some point in their careers, has been as good for as long. The short answer is, no one. But the batter who has got closest is Steve Smith. Between his 42nd and 121st innings he averaged 78.68. Only two others in the 10,000 Test run club have a Bradman measure above 70. Across 57 Tests, from his maiden hundred in 2013 up until the end of the 2019 Ashes, Smith never went more than four games without making a hundred. He averaged 73 in that time and tonned up on 26 occasions. Apart from in Bradman’s case, Test cricket has never known a run like it.
Root’s peak is comparatively low, edging just above 60. It’s a marker of his consistency, arriving fully formed at Nagpur and carrying on with only a few blips along the way. But his highs have arguably been less high than the rest, even if his lows have also been less low or lasted as long. Only once has he made more than two hundreds in a series – Smith has done so four times. If greatness is measured by the height of the peaks, by those feats that not just mere mortals, but also those among the best in the world but untouched by genius can only dream of, then it’s fair to push Root down the pecking order a bit.
The tailing-off curse
Right now, Root’s record stands up amongst the very best of the rest in the game’s history. Whether that is still the case when he hangs up his bat is a different question. Almost every batter in the 10,000 Test run club suffered some kind of end-of-career slump, hastening them towards the exit and pulling their numbers down not just from the peak, but from where they had stayed steady for years until the final decline. After making what would turn out to be his final Test century, Tendulkar averaged 56.94. Twenty-three Tests later, it had dropped by over three points. Ponting’s fall-off was similar – he was averaging the best part of 58 after 100 Tests.
Dravid’s penultimate tour was one of his greatest, the lone warrior in England in 2011. Steve Waugh also managed to avoid a long tail to his career. Root needs to both extend his late peak and to avoid an end-of-days slump to ensure he remains among the very greatest, because a tail-off could affect how he is perceived in every metric. His average could dip below 50. South Africa could become a country in which he’s averaged less than 50 and therefore been merely very good. Bangladesh, with a larger sample size, could become another place he has struggled. The Australian gap in his record could look Australia-sized.
Were Root to retire right now, his numbers would compare favourably to almost every batter in the game’s history. Whether that is still the case when he is actually done could go a long way in determining how he is remembered.
Follow Wisden for all England vs India updates, including live scores, latest news, team lineups, schedule and more. The live streaming details for the ENG vs IND series in India, UK, USA and rest of the world can be found here. For Wisden quizzes, head here.
