Joe Root: Joins elite club
England cricket captain Joe Root became just the fourth player in history to chalk up 1,600 Test runs in a calendar year last week as his side went on to lose the second Ashes Test by 275 runs in Adelaide with Australia taking a 2-0 lead in the five-match series.Root entered the Ashes series with 1,455 runs from 12 Tests including six centuries at an average of 66.13.
He made his best scores of 89 in the first Test and 62 in the second Test. Only Pakistan’s Mohammad Yousuf (1,788 runs in 2006), West Indian legend Viv Richards (1,710 runs in 1976) and former South African captain Graeme Smith (1,656 in 2008) have made more.
The Yorkshireman admitted before leaving for Australia that he had been “desperate” to succeed in a country where he had managed a mere 570 runs, without a hundred, at an average of 38, ahead of the current tour.“I think I probably wanted it too much, I was too desperate, and it had probably a negative impact on the way I played, I put too much pressure on myself,” he said.
