England
captain Joe Root is in the form of his life, notching his third Test ton in as
many matches in the ongoing series against India to guide his side to a
commanding position on Day 2 of the third Test at Headingley.

The century
also saw the 30-year-old draw level with Kevin Pietersen at the second spot among
Englishmen with most Test tons. Only Alastair Cook, with 33 centuries, is ahead.
Root also equalled the record for the most Test centuries in a calendar year by
an English batsman, with only Dennis Compton (1947) and Michael Vaughan (2002)
having notched six tons in a year before.

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Root’s form
this year has also seen him get within distance of a record that has not been
surpassed for nearly a century. Australian batsman Don Bradman, the greatest to
have played Test cricket, scored 974 runs in seven innings against England in
the year 1930, the most scored by a batsman against a single opposition in a
year.

While Root
is nowhere near Bradman’s staggering average of 139.34 from that year’s Ashes series,
he has scored 875 runs in 13 innings against India this year. The English
captain’s 121-run knock in the ongoing third Test took him beyond Australia’s
Mark Taylor, who scored 839 runs in 11 innings against England in 1989.

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In second
place is the West Indies great Clive Lloyd, who scored 903 runs in 14 innings
against India in 1983, with his compatriot Vivian Richards completing the top five
list, having scored 829 runs in seven innings against England in 1976.

Root scored
228 and 186 in two matches against Sri Lanka in January, before notching a
brilliant 218 against India in Chennai the next month. In this series, he
scored 109 runs in the rain-hit series opener at Trent Bridge, with his 180-run
knock at Lord’s going in vain as India won to go 1-0 up in the series.

Root will have two more matches after the ongoing third Test to match Bradman’s record and the kind of form he is in, he just might surpass the great Australian.