Joe Root scored a fine double century on day two of the first Test. (BCCI Photo) Joe Root carved out a brilliant double century in his 100th Test and helped England reach a dominant position on the second day of the first Test against India on Saturday. Root became the first cricketer to make a double hundred in his 100th Test match.
Resuming at his lunch score of 156, Root continued to bat in a serene manner, gathering runs with ease, and reached his double hundred with a six off Ravichandran Ashwin. Root is the first Englishman to bring up a double hundred with a six. He’s the 19th batsman overall to do so and the first since Mayank Agarwal against Bangladesh in November 2019.
Root has now scored 5 double centuries in Test cricket; only Wally Hammond has posted more for England (7).
According to Cricbuzz, this is now the highest individual score for an English captain in India. In all India-England Test matches, the only English captain to score more is Graham Gooch (333 at Lord’s, 1990)
Root has also equaled Graeme Smith and Rahul Dravid’s tally of five double centuries in Test cricket.
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On Day 2, en route to his double ton, Root smashed a boundary to reach 160 and went past India batting great Sachin Tendulkar to climb up the table in a unique record. Root now has 8,406 runs in 100 Test matches, toppling the former Indian cricketer who had scored 8,405 runs in his first 100 Tests.
He is also the second Test captain to register 150+ scores in three successive Tests since Donald Bradman, who achieved the feat in 1937.
This was Root’s third 150+ score in consecutive Tests, joint-second-most along with Wally Hammond (1928-29), Don Bradman (1937), Zaheer Abbas (1982-93), Mudassar Nazar (1983), Tom Latham (2018-19). Notably, Kumar Sangakkara (2007) leads the tally with four such scores.