Runs record in sight as Root rises to the top once more

Invoking the usual caveats regarding fitness, form and freedom to travel a pestilence-ravaged globe, Joe Root is on course for a calendar-year Test runs spree that has seen no equal across almost a century and a half.

And depending on his productivity in this summer's Ashes series, he might push the 2,000-run barrier that has previously seemed as fanciful as flying cars or COVID-zero.

The England captain, who returned to the top of the International Cricket Council’s Test batting rankings on Wednesday, lifted his 2021 tally to 1398 runs from 11 matches after scoring 121 in his team's hefty victory over India at Headingley last week.

It was Root's fourth Test century of the year to date – two of which have been double hundreds – and over the first eight months of this year he boasts an average of 69.90 following series in Sri Lanka, India and at home.

The record for most Test runs in a calendar is held by former Pakistan captain Mohammad Yousuf who in 2006 plundered 1788 from 19 innings that yielded a remarkable nine centuries and three further scores in excess of 50.

But given Root has a further five Tests scheduled before the dawn of 2022 (two more against India and three Vodafone Ashes fixtures in Australia) it would seem Yousuf's benchmark is well within the Yorkshireman's grasp.

And when his current return of 70 runs per visit to the crease is extrapolated across a possible maximum of 10 Test innings, there exists the very real prospect Root might become the first men's player in 144 years to crack 2000 Test runs within a calendar year.

History provides persuasive cases for and against that hitherto unconquered peak being successfully scaled.

Others to have enjoyed a scoring glut similar to that which Root has found himself in since his epic 228 across almost eight hours at Galle in mid-January have shown proclivity to be even more productive in the back end of the year.

By way of parallel, Yousuf's final five Tests of his annus mirabilis yielded 993 runs at an average of 124 as he equalled Sir Donald Bradman's record of six centuries in consecutive matches.

Yousuf also smashed the previous calendar year Test runs record of 1710 set in 1976 by West Indies legend Sir Viv Richards whose high watermark might still stand had he not missed the second Test against England during that rampant summer with glandular fever.

Richards returned from illness in menacing touch and thrashed 893 runs at an average of 111 in his final five Test outings in 1976.

Of the seven batters to have passed 1500 Test runs in a calendar year to date, only India duo Sachin Tendulkar (42 in 2010) and Sunil Gavaskar (49 in 1979) as well as ex-South Africa captain Graeme Smith (65 in 2008) have averaged less than Root's current 69 in their final five Tests of their golden year.

Australians Michael Clarke (average 135 in his last five Tests of 2012) and Ricky Ponting (127 in 2003 and 72 in 2005) add credence to the hypothesis that batters in the sort of sublime touch Root is displaying get better as the year goes on.

Root will tomorrow enter the fourth Test against India at The Oval – a venue where he averages almost 50 in Tests – eyeing the 80 runs that will carry him past his previous single-year best of 1477 in 2016.

A further four runs after that will see him overtake fellow Yorkshireman Michael Vaughan (1481 in 2002) as England's most productive batter in a calendar year.

During commentary for the BBC at Headingley last week, Vaughan proclaimed of Root "there can’t be that many who have played as well as this consistently for so long in an England jersey".

Vaughan later took to Twitter to anoint Root the world's foremost contemporary Test batter.

With the final Test against India scheduled to start on September 10 at Old Trafford where the current England skipper averages 65, and the venue he compiled his career-best 254 against Pakistan in 2016, Root might well begin his Ashes campaign with 1500-plus runs to his name in 2021.

However, the right hander will need to significantly improve his return on Australian pitches if he is to dethrone Yousuf on the calendar year honour board and threaten the mystical 2000-run milestone before he turns 31 on December 30.

Despite spending the 2010-11 summer as a teenager playing Premier Cricket in Adelaide and attending the Darren Lehmann Cricket Academy in that city, Root has struggled to prosper on fast, bouncy tracks down under and averages just 38 from nine Tests in Australia.

At the three venues currently scheduled to host Ashes Tests before the end of 2021 – Brisbane, Adelaide and Melbourne – Root has averaged 31, 44 and 33 respectively.

His highest Test score in Australia is the 87 he posted when elevated to number three in the second Test of 2013-14 at Adelaide Oval, a game best remembered for Mitchell Johnson's marauding menace.

After failing to reach 25 in his four subsequent innings as England plummeted towards a series whitewash that summer, Root was dropped from the starting XI after the fourth Test at the MCG.

But there are compelling reasons why the disappointment Root nursed in Australia at the close of 2013 might give way to a place in history eight years later.

Not only did he seize his berth in England's Test team when recalled for the 2014 series against Sri Lanka by plundering an unbeaten 200 at Lord's in his comeback innings, come the next Ashes battle the following year he set the scene for the urn's return with 134 in the first Test at Cardiff.

By series end against Australia, Root had risen to the top of the ICC's Test batting rankings by dint of being England's top scorer with 460 runs at 57.5 in his team's 3-2 victory.

He also recorded England's highest batting average (47.25) in the 2017-18 series loss where he was forced to retire ill with viral gastroenteritis while batting amid stifling heat during the fifth Test in Sydney, and will arrive in Australia later this year with at least six Test tons to his name for 2021.

The only other England batters to have achieved that record in a calendar year are Vaughan (in 2002) and Denis Compton (1947), while Yousuf's nine centuries in 2006 endures as the gold standard ahead of the seven compiled by each of Richards (1976), Ponting (2006), Tendulkar (2010) and Sri Lanka's Aravinda de Silva (1997).

And the rich seam of runs Root is currently mining has him knocking on the door of an even more exclusive club of Test batters who have reached 200 in Test matches on three or more occasions in the course of a single year.

Should he post another double-ton he takes his place alongside Bradman (three times in 1930), Ponting (in 2003), New Zealand's Brendon McCullum (in 2014) and his rival captain in the current series against India, Virat Kohli, who has twice achieved that hat-trick (in 2016 and 2017).

Ex-Australia captain Clarke is the only batter to have reached 200 four times in a calendar year during his extraordinary 2012, but it's another item of history that might yet fall tantalisingly within Root's reach.