Like a cricket-playing Michelangelo, Joe Root has etched his name in Test history | Joe Root

IIt could easily have been a square drive through cover, a clip off the pads through midwicket, a late lead to third or, for fun, perhaps even that splitting reverse ramp. Joe Root has so many options at his disposal, so many ways to either penetrate or clear an in-field, that any number would have been a fitting way to overtake Alastair Cook and become England's leading run-scorer in Test cricket.

In the end, when Root led England's fight against Pakistan in Multan with that 35th Test century, it was a simple but magnificent four that took him to 71 before lunch on the third day, a tick above Cook's tally of 12,472 test runs. Cook held the English record for a total of nine years, pushing Graham Gooch's 8,900 into second place in 2015, where he eclipsed the master as an apprentice. But even as he became more focused on that formidable bunch before his retirement three years later, Cook in all likelihood knew he would keep the seat warm for his teammate.

If there were multiple suitable ways Root could have reached this peak, there would only ever be one way to mark it. For all the mastery that Root produced over his 12-year career in England, for all the smooth skills that made him a generational talent, it was rarely about himself.

After tying Aamir Jamal to the rope, he strolled across the pitch to do some gardening, batted gloves with Ben Duckett and finally waved modestly to an enthusiastic England balcony. Still 335 runs behind in the match, the task was far from complete.

It may be that, alongside cricket's paywalled existence in the UK, this lack of ego and self-promotion has also prevented Root from transcending the sport entirely. There was a time when a home Ashes win would have seen the Man of the Series secure a place on the shortlist for the BBC Sports Personality of the Year award.

But when Root achieved this feat in 2015, he failed. Root isn't lacking in personality – in fact, he's a beauty – but somehow this understated excellence in his chosen field has never quite reached the mainstream, unlike Andrew Flintoff in 2005 or Ben Stokes in 2019. This is a rather This trend is likely to continue this year for England's Test team (Spoty has long since lost its luster anyway). But there is little doubt that we are experiencing great things.

Since the start of 2021, Root has amassed 4,755 Test runs at an average of 57.9, chiseling 18 Michelangelo-like centuries. He returned to the top of the batting rankings for the ninth time in July and is now opening a significant gap between himself and the other members of Martin Crowe's so-called Fab Four. When Root walks into the middle these days, there's something of a sense of inevitability in a sport that produces far more failures than successes.

This golden run of golden runs actually spans two chapters of Root's remarkable career. The first was the final 18 months of his captaincy, when Root realized that only personal excellence with the bat could make up the deficit as his team went downhill in the grip of the pandemic. However, it is his current spell post-captaincy – 2,689 runs at 61.1 under the leadership of Stokes and the relentlessly optimistic environment fostered by Brendon McCullum – that speaks to this lack of ego more than any other.

Root has returned to the fold, shown no bitterness over the team's Technicolor turnaround and, while dabbling in Bazball for a bit (before realizing that his classic approach trumps everything), has reached a whole new level. Against the quicks, perhaps only Pat Cummins and Jasprit Bumrah have given him sustained headaches of late, while his game against spin – that remarkable ability to pick lengths and adapt at lightning speed – looks pretty peerless at the moment. If the machines became self-aware tomorrow and challenged humanity to a test match, Root would certainly be a key for the No. 4 position.

As Mike Atherton noted in a commentary, Root's love of sport lies behind this excellence – the drive to stay fit, improve and develop; A love that was largely nurtured from the day he was born into a cricket-loving family in Sheffield and his father Matt placed a small bat in his crib.

Most encouraging for England fans, and hopefully for supporters of Test cricket more broadly, is the prospect of more games. Cook retired at 33 with miles on the clock, but Root, now around the same age and having delivered a heat-defying masterpiece in Multan, appears completely untroubled.

Provided the eyes remain sharp and the back relaxed, this won't be the last milestone Root reaches before the day finally arrives. In just over 12 months there is an Ashes urn to win back, a first Test century on Australian soil to convince the strangely unconvinced and, who knows, perhaps even a break in Sachin Tendulkar's world record of 15,921 Test runs with 3,344 still to go receive. Given the way he plays, his mind clear and his movements so synchronized, things are looking good.