On Friday, Joe root will go into his 100th Test determined not to let his individual fights divert him from his larger goal od leading England to a series victory in India, Root said on Thursday.
One of the sub-plots of four Test series will be a batting need to feel superior between contemporary cricket’s two chiefs batsmen in Root and his India counterpart, Virat Kohli.
Captain of Australia Steve Smith and New Zealand captain Kane Williamson complete cricket’s “Big Four” but Root said his effort has always been to learn from and not to compete with the trio.
In a video conference, Root told, “It is silly not to watch how they go about things… how they manage their own games and keep moving and getting better all the time, and then try and add that to my own game.”
“In terms of those individual battles, for me that’s not the most important thing. Its not something that I will look at, what I will look is always trying to win this series.”
Root has been in glimmering batting from, having scored a double century and a century in his last two Tests in Sri Lanka and he is also England’s best Batsman against spin bowling and his duel will be Ravichandran Ashwin will be another part of interest in the series.
“He’s a good bowler, he’s got a great record in India and is probably full of confidence,” Root said of the off-spinner.
“I have played against him earlier, scored some runs, and he’s probably had the better of me a couple of times as well. Its going to be a great little battle within the Test match.”
Geoffrey Boycott, former England opener has said that Root can go on to play 200 Tests and adopt Sachin Tendulkar’s record of 15,921 runs in the format.
Root has accomplished 8,249 Test runs within a 49-plus average, said he was not looking that far.
“It’s taken a long time to play these 100 Test matches and it will take a long time to potentially do that again,” Root said.
“To get anywhere near him, I have to play a hell of lot more Test cricket and right now I just got to concentrate on trying to be the best I can.”
After Zak Crawley got ruled out due to his wrist injury for the first two series England’s has suffered a massive jolt.
