How does Joe Root's Test records compared with other greats?

Joe Root recently went past the milestone of 12,000 Test runs, something only six players had ever done before. How does the England star stack up against these greats of the game?

During the course of his 87 in the first innings against West Indies at Edgbaston, Root went past the mark to overtake Brian Lara and move into seventh spot for runs scored in Test cricket. Only one other Englishman, Alastair Cook, has made it past 12,000. The other five ahead of Root are Sachin Tendulkar, Ricky Ponting, Jacques Kallis, Rahul Dravid and Kumar Sangakkara.

Time flies when you're scoring runs

One measure by which Root comes out on top among these players is the time taken to reach 12,000 runs. He made his Test debut on December 13, 2012 and achieved the milestone on July 26, 2024 (match start dates) — 11 years and 226 days later. No one else has gotten there quicker. Alastair Cook is the only other one to do it in under 14 years' time, at 11 years and 309 days.

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A large part of this is down to the fact that England play far more Test cricket than most other nations. Root and Cook played roughly 12 Tests a year, compared to the others on this list who played between 8 and 10 a year. Even so, Root maintaining his consistency despite playing three formats and multiple World Cups for a long chunk of his career is quite impressive.

For a similar reason (more matches scheduled), Root and Cook are only players to reach 12,000 Test runs before turning 35 years old.

Joe Root: The most prolific of the lot?

The march to 12,000 Test runs has taken Root 143 matches. There has also been talk of him potentially going past Tendulkar's tally of 15,921 runs. The following graph shows the career progression of Test cricket's top seven run-getters, after 143 Test matches each (Sangakkara only played 134 in total).

Made with Flourish

Kumar Sangakkara reached the 12,000-run mark in 130 Tests, but apart from him no other player reached the milestone before Root's record of 143 Tests. As far as catching Tendulkar goes, Root has a 661-run lead at this point, comparing matches played. He is also nearly a year younger than Tendulkar was, and has an abundance of Test matches to take part in over the next few years.

However, in terms of innings played, Root is actually the second-slowest to the mark (261) after Alastair Cook (275). Sangakkara, once again, was the quickest at 224 innings.

Big scores: Who cashed in best?

When it comes to batting, the scores of 50 and 100 in an innings (half-centuries and centuries) are traditionally used as milestones. At the time of reaching 12,000 Test runs, nobody had registered more scores of 50 and above than Joe Root's 95. Jacques Kallis had the same number, with Ricky Ponting and Rahul Dravid on 91 and 90 respectively.

What is interesting to note, though, is Root ranks joint-second last for the number of centuries scored at this point (32). His conversion rate of half-centuries to centuries is the worst among these seven players, at 33.7%. Tendulkar was the best at 43.8%, as 39 of his 89 scores of fifty or more were converted into centuries.

This is a fairly clear bucking of the trend, although Rahul Dravid showed a similar tendency. While the others had more innings of higher scores, Root so far has relied on a significantly larger number of lower scores to make up the difference.

This is not necessarily a negative, though. In fact, a batter who can consistently reach 50 may sometimes be better for the team, compared to another who can go past 100 if they get to 50, but is less sure of getting to 50 in the first place.

Slowly but surely, Joe Root has notched up a run tally that sits among the greatest in the game and by other metrics, he measures up to those before him quite well. While there are factors in his favour (like more Test matches in the schedule), there are also those against him, such as the fact that his home games are in England, generally a difficult country for top-order batters.

He has long been acknowledged as one of the best batters of his generation, alongside Kane Williamson, Steve Smith and Virat Kohli. But by the time he calls it a day, it may be that Root has forced us to count him among the very best to have ever played Test cricket.

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