Joe Root overtook Shivnarine Chanderpaul on the leading Test run-scorers' list on the fourth day at Trent Bridge – only seven players have scored more Test runs than the former England captain. Where will he finish by the end of his career?
Joe Root's 32nd Test hundred, one that was of vital importance to his side, saw him move past Chanderpaul on the list of the Test game's leading run-scorers.
Next on Root's radar is another titan of Caribbean cricket, Brian Lara, who on 11,953 runs is only 18 runs ahead of Root.
After Lara, are another pair of left-handers, Kumar Sangakkara (12,400) and Sir Alastair Cook (12,472). Given England's schedule and Root's excellent fitness record, you would expect the Yorkshireman to move past both at some point this year.
Root's career average is almost exactly 50 runs per dismissal and with England featuring in 10 more Tests in 2024, only injury or a severe downturn in form would see Root fail to break into the top five on the all-time list.
Above Cook, there is a jump. Ricky Ponting (13,378), Jacques Kallis (13,289) and Rahul Dravid (13,288) occupy spots two to four respectively, around 800 to 1,000 runs more than Cook.
Can Root overtake Sachin?
In 2025, England play six home Tests – one against Zimbabwe at Lord's and five against India – before embarking on a tour Down Under. That leaves Root with a possible 21 Tests between the end of the ongoing Trent Bridge Test and the end of the 2025/26 Ashes.
Barring a severe decline in output, you would expect Root to surpass Dravid, Kallis and Ponting by the fifth Test of the 2025/26 Ashes. By which point, Root will have just turned 35 and in the region of 2,500 Test runs behind the man who tops the list, Sachin Tendulkar.
If Joe Root continued to score at his current rate (84 runs per Test), he would need to play another 47 Tests to pass Sachin Tendulkar as the leading run scorer in Test cricket. At his current rate of around 12 Tests a year, that would take about four more years.
— Ben Jones (@benjonescricket) July 21, 2024
Across his career, Root has averaged in the region of 1,000 Test runs per year so to be in with a decent shout of overtaking Tendulkar, Root will likely have to play past his 37th birthday.
In the modern era, it is extremely rare for English batters to play Test cricket past their 36th birthdays. In fact, this century, Alec Stewart is the only English top seven batter to play more than a handful of Tests after turning 36. This may in part be due to the relentlessness of England's diet of international cricket, but as James Anderson showed in playing for England up to the age of 41, with a carefully managed individual schedule, almost anything is possible.
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