Brook dropped.

Lucky fella Brook. been terrible play from England this morning.

Good partnership this, nearly got enough runs now.

Brook going for the fastest 100 here I reckon

154 to get for Joe!
Can he do it in England?!

If he can get much closer in this innings, he can surely do it at the Oval.. if not definitely do it in Pakistan in October.

comment by I am a number (U23088)
posted 8 minutes ago
154 to get for Joe!
Can he do it in England?!
----------------------------------------------------------------------
I've missed this count down, is this to go past Cookie? I know he's close to Sangakarra as well.

I saw an interesting visual which showed "the big 4" in order of centuries scored from 4 years ago

Kohli 27
Smith 26
Williamson 21
Root 17

Now it's

Root 33
Williamson 32
Smith 32
Kohli 29

For a while he was seen as the Andy Murray of the big four rather than actually being in the conversation of who is the best.

Andy Murray

quite a humorous comparison

Kohli 2 100s in 4 years?

why not bat on?
at least gives the crowd and viewers some more cricket.
if we can't bowl them out in 2 days then god knows what.
obviously not going to happen, but i'm not convinced there's any point in declaring before tea.

root currently averaging 102.5 this summer

63.5 since the start of 2023.

55.5 this decade.

Come on Rooty another 100 here

Must say I might smile if Sri Lanka are 120-0 at stumps.

If England declare with Root on 100, he'll need 99 to become England's highest run scorer.
If he's on 98 at the Oval and hits a single, does he celebrate?

he'd have to raise his bat wouldn't he?

Root!

Rooooooooooooooooooooooooooot
most centuries by an England test batsman in history.. and more to come

Pointless now

Needs 96.

just needs 24 to over take Sangakkara

comment by Dave&Danny dynamic (U4428)
posted 20 minutes ago
Pointless now
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Yeah all that freneticism kind of spoiled the moment, and was itself completely pointless.
The balcony should have just chilled. Pope standing there in his whites ready to field just injected a load of tension and pressure into what should have been a special moment, and for no benefit whatsoever.
Never mind.

Glad we have DRS, the umpire made an honest mistake there. and thankfully the sri-lankan player could ask for a review

Most of the 10k+ scorers stopped playing test cricket around 38.
Joe's 34 now.
Barring injury or his eyes going early, you'd hope he would be playing at least the 2027 Ashes (when he'll be 37).

That's a possible 36 tests.

He's scoring up to now at about 85 runs per test.

At the same rate that gives him another 3,000 runs

= 15,377

Sachin got 15,921

Michael Vaughan was spot on about Joe Root. The game is full of people who try to obliterate the ball to the boundary. Watching Root stroke the ball into gaps, manipulating the field whilst having such attention to detail like running a single to a fielder's weaker hand is a thing of beauty. He has so many ways to rotate the strike that even good balls will go for 1.