Among the top four batters in the world is England’s star batsman Joe Root. He is one of the “fab four” that critics and fans have declared to include Steve Smith, Virat Kohli, and Kane Williamson. In Test cricket, the right-handed hitter just achieved the milestone of 12,000 runs. Former Australia captain Ricky Ponting has boldly predicted that Root will surpass the mark held by the legendary Sachin Tendulkar.
In 261 innings, the 33-year-old has scored 12027 runs at an average of 50.11. Notably, he is only a few feet away from surpassing Ponting’s record of 13378 runs. About Tendulkar’s record, the veteran of England needs 3,992 runs to go beyond the incredible 15921 milestone. Also, because of the subcontinent’s favourable batting conditions, the Yorkshire native will see an El Dorado when he sets foot on Lankan territory for the red-ball series.
“It is possible that he will break Sachin’s record. His age of 33 puts him (more than) 3,000 runs behind. The number of Test matches they play determines how soon they will reach their goal; if they play 10 to 14 Test matches annually and score 800 to 1,000 runs, that suggests they are just three or four years away. That will so bring him to 37 (years of age). “There’s every chance that he could do it if his hunger persists,” Ponting stated in the most recent episode of The ICC Review.
The key factor has been his conversion rates: Joe Root
Since the year’s beginning, Root has been in excellent shape. He scored a century in the most recent West Indies series, his fourth of the year and his 32nd cumulative. Like Kohli, Root is renowned for turning strong starts into noteworthy hundreds and for tasting blood after a successful start. Ponting emphasised that exact point and praised the batter for leveraging the peak 30s custom.
“Over the past few years, he has become increasingly better. It is often discussed that batters reach their peak in their early 30s, and he has undoubtedly achieved that. The main issue has been his conversion rates. He was fighting to make hundreds of dollars, and he was making a lot of fifty dollars four or five years ago.
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Lately, though, he has turned the other way. He now makes a massive hundred almost every time he reaches fifty. Thus, that represents his true turnaround,” he continued.