Joe Root Leapfrogs Alastair Cook To Become The Fastest England Batsman To Cross 9000 Test Runs

England captain Joe Root continued to tumble the records on the third day of the Lord’s Test as he leapfrogged former skipper Alastair Cook to become the fastest English batsman to breach Mount.9000 in the longest format of the game.

On a day when Joe Root scored his 5th Test ton of the calendar year, the English skipper also became the first active cricketer of the current era to cross the 9000-run barrier in Test match cricket and in record time.

Root has achieved the milestone in his 197th innings as opposed to Alastair Cook, who took 204 innings for the same.

The English skipper is now the second-highest run-scorer in Test cricket from his country and his 22nd Test ton was his 11th as captain; only Alastair Cook has hit more (12).

Root is in the midst of a real purple patch this calendar year and he has been churning out Test hundreds for fun.

He started the year off with a match-winning double hundred against Sri Lanka in Galle and followed it up with another daddy hundred in the second Test before smashing a match-winning double ton in Chennai to lead England to a thumping 227-run-win.

Root’s runs dried up in the next 5 Tests against India and New Zealand and so did England’s victories as the ‘Three Lions’ suffered five defeats in a row.

But, the 30-year-old has once again stepped up for his side against his favorite opponent, India.

The Yorkshireman was the prime reason why England didn’t go to Lord’s 0-1 down. It was his classy 109 in the second innings (he had scored a brilliant 64 in the 1st innings) that ensured that England set India a tricky target of 209.

Root has carried his form in the Lord’s Test as he scored yet another brilliant ton- his 7th against India- to put England in the driver’s seat on the third day.

The English skipper is looking impregnable at the crease and at the time of writing he was batting on 146 with the home side on the brink of overhauling India’s first innings total of 364.

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