'You don't win games with 70s and 80s' - Root

Joe Root has admitted he should already have up to double his nine Test centuries and can't quite work out why he does not convert into three figures more consistently.

Since the beginning of 2015, Root has scored four centuries in 19 Tests but has been dismissed between 50 and 98 on a further 13 occasions, the most recent being in the first innings at Chester-le-Street when he got into a tangle against Nuwan Pradeep and spooned a catch to cover, having move serenely to 80 - a shot he termed as a "car crash".

He is not letting the issue weigh too heavily on his mind - "I feel I am contributing consistently" - but knows that the best Test batsmen in the world he is jostling with to be ranked No. 1 are judged on their century output.

"You are always striving to get better, and it's an area that over the last few months has been very frustrating for me because I am playing well, but you don't win games with 70s and 80s. You want to make sure you cash in," Root said.

"There have been a few decent deliveries in there but mainly it's been batsman error so it's an area that needs to be addressed in practice - and it has been - and the only thing I can really do is make sure I don't make the same mistake twice.

"You look at the dismissal [in Durham] and it was a car crash, really. It was awful. It's hard to put your finger on it. I don't think I change my approach or the way I play when I get to a certain score. I'd like to think it was a bit of a coincidence and it's all happened together.

"I feel my game is in a good place, I'm moving well. If anything maybe I get slightly complacent for the odd ball, sometimes you get away with it and it goes unnoticed and sometimes it catches up with you and you are made to look very silly. I don't think that's the case, but it may come across that way. I'm working really hard and it's something I want to address."

Root stressed how he is not a player too fussed about personal landmarks and suggested that, on occasion, he may get caught up in the natural free-scoring pace that he operates at and that encapsulates this England side.

"Complacent is probably the wrong word, maybe concentrating is a better way to put it. Maybe you are caught in the flow of the game, scoring at a certain rate and you try to score against deliveries that don't allow you to," he said. "It's not something that's really concerning me to be honest, but it's an annoyance that I want to put right. If I've been got out, fair play, but I don't want to throw it away."

Despite the issue of reaching three figures on fewer occasions than he would have liked, Root's game has developed enormously over the last two years - since his recall against Sri Lanka at Lord's in 2014 when he scored a double-century following omission at the end of 2013-14 Ashes whitewash - to make him one of the most complete batsmen in the world. But in his determination to further improve, he watches his contemporaries closely.

"As a kid growing up I would look at the best players and think there's a reason they are at the top, they are doing something that sets them apart," he said. "These days, AB [de Villiers], Virat [Kohli] in the shorter formats, then Steve [Smith] and Kane [Williamson], it would be silly not to look at the way they play and try to add bits to my game. If you can take any little nugget hopefully you will benefit from it."

Although Root remains a delightful touch player - his innings in the World T20 against South Africa where his 83 off 44 balls marshalled England's huge chase was a stand-out example - his boundary-hitting has been one of the areas that has developed most significantly since the early days of his international career when a slight, scrawny 21-year-old made 73 off 229 balls against India in Nagpur.

"It's a slow process when it comes to the gym side of it, a long-term improvement I'm looking for," he said. "If you don't practice hitting it for six you won't do it, either. It's an area I want to keep developing and it's good to see it going in the same direction."

With boundary-hitting in mind - and his flamboyant whip over deep midwicket in the recent Roses T20 against Lancashire was the latest example of what he is now capable of - Root joked that he would like bats to get bigger, rather than smaller as the ICC cricket committee has recently suggested, but he remains sanguine about any potential changes to the tools of his trade.

"If they feel it's making an unfair advantage then fair enough, as a batter you have to be skilful and strong enough to find different ways of scoring if restrictions will be put in place," he said. "There's no less skill in being able to hit it out of the park to being able to flick it as long as it goes for six. If players are good enough they will find ways of doing it."

Root is clearly good enough to adapt to whatever shape (or size) the game takes. He would just like a few more hundreds to show for it.