Root overtakes Tendulkar

You don’t need to be paying a lot of attention to know that Joe Root, having passed Rahul Dravid, Jacques Kallis and Ricky Ponting during the Old Trafford Test against India, is now the second highest run-scorer in Test cricket. Naturally, there is a lot of speculation as to whether he will pass Sachin Tendulkar and become the highest. If he succeeds in passing the Indian maestro and the long promised demise of Test cricket finally comes to fruition in the relatively near future, then he will hold that record for all eternity. Will he make it? Let’s do some maths. We could make some assumptions as to how many Tests he will play over the next few years and how many he may score in those Tests, but I am going to do an extrapolation based purely on calendar days. This will effectively imply any other assumptions that we could have made. Root debuted in Nagpur on 13 December 2012. As of today (8 August 2025) his career is 4 621 days old. He has made 13 543 runs in that time, which is 2.93 runs per calendar day. Extrapolating that to the 15 922 runs he needs to go to the top of the pile, he will pass Tendulkar on 28 October 2027. A lot could go wrong on the way, but given that he will still be two months short of his 37^th birthday at that time, it seems more likely than not that he will do it (last assumption: assuming he wants to).

During the recently completed thriller at The Oval, Root did pass one of Tendulkar’s world Test records. You will not be surprised to learn that this world record is slightly less auspicious. It is nonetheless admirable in its own way. His bowling figures of 5-1-15-0 in India’s 2^nd innings were his 113^th wicketless innings of his Test career.