Joe Root ended his rather perplexing century drought in Australia on a day when the rest of his teammates largely struggled to deal with Mitchell Starc and the pink ball in the second Ashes Test at the Gabba. Root finished the day batting on 135 off 202, powering England to a score of 325/9 with Starc taking six wickets. It was Root’s first ever Test century in Australia but it also made him just the fourth player of all time to score 40 centuries in his career in this format.
Root joined former Australia captain Ricky Ponting (41 centuries), South Africa great Jacques Kallis (45) and India legend Sachin Tendulkar (51) in being the only players to have scored 40 tons in the history of Test cricket. The 34-year-old has been on an extraordinary run of form over the past five years, finishing three of the four calendar years between 2021 and 2024 with over thousand runs in Test cricket and is widely touted to break Tendulkar’s long standing record for most runs in the format. Root’s career tally stands at 13,686 after Day 1 of the pink-ball Test while Tendulkar finished with 15,921 runs in 200 matches.