Former England skipper Michael Vaughan reckons that India pacer Jasprit Bumrah will create a lot of trouble for Joe Root in the upcoming five-match series against India in 2025. The Indian team will visit England to take part in a five-match Test series starting from June 20. Root has been in brilliant form in the ongoing World Test Championship (WTC) cycle, currently standing as the top scorer so far.
As of now, Root has collected 1398 runs from 16 games at an average of 53.76 with the help of five hundreds and six fifties.
“This week really hit home to me how important Joe Root is to this batting lineup. His batting is the key. All these flamboyant players around him get flamboyant fifties. But without the glue at No 4 getting the huge amount of runs he does, they are knackered,” wrote Vaughan in his column for The Telegraph.
“He can’t do it every week, and he didn’t do it this week. Jasprit Bumrah enjoys bowling at Root, and could severely limit his output next summer. The same goes for Pat Cummins in Australia, where Root has never scored a hundred. England have to have ways of succeeding when Root doesn’t make big runs. On the basis of this game, they don’t,” he added.
Talking about the stats against India, Root has collected the most number of runs against India in the red ball format. The 33-year-old batter has accumulated 2846 runs against India at an average of 58.08 with the help of ten hundreds and 11 fifties. He will be looking to continue his good run as he faces Bumrah who got him out nine times in his career so far.
As of now, Joe Root has amassed 12,401 runs in Test cricket, and he needs only 72 more to surpass Alastair Cook’s feat of scoring most runs for England in the red ball format of the game. He is also standing on the edge of being the first batter in the World Test Championship history to collect 5000 runs. In the 58 games that he has played so far, the former English skipper has made 4973 runs.