Joe Root

England's most prolific Test run-maker of all time, Joe Root was marked for greatness early, and he achieved it indisputably, becoming the highest scorer among the four batters near universally recognised as the best of the first quarter of the 21st century - of whom Virat Kohli, Steven Smith and Kane Williamson are the others.

Early expectations that Root would establish himself as an opener did not materialise. HIs expansive game seemed better suited to No. 3 or No. 4. A slender batter reliant on precision, he displayed patience and stubbornness at the crease. People saw something of his mentor, Michael Vaughan, in Root's front-foot drive; the pair both attended Sheffield Collegiate.

Root was not a strikingly heavy scorer as he worked through the ranks, though he impressed with 937 runs in his first County Championship season for Yorkshire, and followed it with 738 in his second, at an average of 43, including an unbeaten 222 against Hampshire in Southampton.

His Test debut, in Nagpur in 2012, exemplified the qualities that coaches had admired. He scored a painstaking 73 from 229 and displayed the patience and discrimination demanded both by the situation of the game and a slow surface.

His rise continued with a maiden Test hundred on his home ground, Headingley, against New Zealand in 2013, followed by a maiden Ashes century at Lord's after he was promoted to open. Root looked set to occupy that role for many years to come, but his fortunes dipped as the series went on and then crashed along with the team's as England were whitewashed in Australia in 2013-14; he was dropped for the fifth Test, in Sydney.

Proof of his ability came in the way he responded. He followed up a two-tone double hundred against Sri Lanka at Lord's - a disciplined innings with a freewheeling finale - with two more big hundreds against India, all three unbeaten.

Root had the fortune to lead Yorkshire to the Championship title at Trent Bridge in 2014, when Andrew Gale was suspended. His full potential then poured forth in 2015, the first of many years in which he made over 1000 Test runs, and he vied with Smith at the top of the ICC Test rankings. Root played with alacrity on all surfaces and in all formats and his obvious delight in his art was a positive symbol in an England side committed to a more enterprising approach. Jaunty Ashes hundreds in Cardiff and Nottingham helped England to victories, his consistency at No. 4 repeatedly masked top-order frailties, and a mischievous sense of humour made his success all the more pleasurable.

In 2015 and 2016, Root set consecutive records for runs accumulated across all formats in a calendar year for England, with 2228 and 2570 respectively. In 2016, he came within five runs of surpassing Vaughan's calendar high-water mark of 1481 for England in Tests, which had stood since 2002. He broke that record handsomely in 2021, with 1708, and breached 1500 again in 2024, the year he made a personal-best 268, against Pakistan in Multan, in an innings where England declared on 823, the fourth biggest Test total ever. In that innings, Root also went clear of Alastair Cook as England's top Test scorer of all time.

Root was appointed captain in 2017, after Cook resigned. In hindsight, the decision was something of an error. England's win-loss ratio took a beating under him: they lost three Test series against New Zealand, home and away, didn't win any of three Ashes, and lost two away series in a row to West Indies. Root's batting average as captain was about eight runs fewer than when he wasn't in charge, and for a stretch of more than a year, he went without a hundred in Tests.

In summer 2022, relieved of the burdens of leadership, and seemingly emboldened by England's "Bazball" philosophy, he rediscovered his old self, going on to average 57 with 11 hundreds from 35 Tests, striking at nearly 70, and drawing impressively clear of his Fab Four counterparts.

Root was a force in ODI cricket in the second half of the 2010s, and he made over 900 runs three years in a row starting 2017. He stepped away from the format in 2020, though he returned in the World Cup year of 2023; England were poor in that tournament, though Root himself made three fifties. Largely surplus to England's white-ball requirements in the 2020s, he made the occasional appearance for Trent Rockets in the first few years of the Hundred, winning the title with them in 2022.