Excuse the somewhat hyperbolic headline. I’m sure that players like Ken Barrington and Dennis Compton were absolutely immense. I mean no disrespect. The problem for me is that these players were strutting their stuff in cream flannels long before my time. They’re relics from a past era.

Even Geoff Boycott’s career seems like an age ago to me. I’ll be celebrating my 40th birthday in a few months time and I never saw Sir Geoffrey play a shot in anger – or should that be a forward defensive with extreme caution? You know what I mean.

Due to my relative youth, ahem, I’m left to dwell on players from the modern era. I define ‘modern’ as the period from the 1980s onwards. I know this isn’t exactly a scientifically calculated watershed but it’ll do for now.

So who exactly is England’s best batsman of the modern era? We’ll all have different views but perhaps we can agree on the leading candidates: David Gower, Mike Atherton (pre-back injury), Graham Thorpe, Marcus Trescothick, Kevin Pietersen, Alastair Cook and, wait for it, Joe Root.

No doubt we’ve all got our favourite from the shortlist above. Judgements like this are always subjective. But what do the history books say? If we can’t make up our mind there’s always Peter Moores’ best friend, the computer data, to guide us in our hour of need.

Our first reference point might be a milestone achieved by Joe Root on the fifth morning of the second test against Pakistan. On the Monday morning he became the second youngest Englishman in history to reach 3,000 test runs. Not bad, eh. Sky were briefly all over this.

During the lunch break, Ian Ward pulled up a list of the youngest England players to reach this brilliant milestone. There were some really famous names on the list, including some I mentioned above. Top of the pile, of course, was our doughty captain Alastair Cook. The skipper reached 3000 test runs at a slightly younger age than Root (there’s a couple of months in it I recall).

Here’s what Ian Ward said about Root’s achievement (I’m paraphrasing to some extent):

Congratulations to Joe Root on becoming the second youngest Englishman to reach 3,000 test runs. Here’s a list of the youngest Englishmen to reach the milestone. It just goes to show how good he is. It also just goes to show how brilliant Alastair Cook is – the man at the top of the list.

I was a little confused by all this. Putting up a list of the ‘youngest’ players to reach 3,000 test runs seemed rather curious. Surely a far better measurement is how quickly a player reaches 3000 runs – in other words how much time (or how many innings) it took them to score all those runs. After all, cricketers have little control over how old they are when they make their debut. Opportunity often comes down to injuries or a country’s strength in depth at a particular position.

Cook was able to nail down a place at the top of England’s order so quickly because of poor Marcus Trescothick’s stress related retirement. Good old Banger and Strauss formed an excellent opening partnership for England. Cook might have been forced to wait two or three years for his opportunity in a parallel universe. But that’s another story. He took his chance when it came and good luck to him. He’s generally been brilliant for England over the years.

However, I couldn’t help feeling that Root’s achievements had been somewhat undersold. I like Joe Root. I’m a big fan; therefore I decided to do some statistical digging to back up my admiration. His test average of 57 is obviously far superior to all other modern English batsmen but I wanted to delve deeper. What other lists could Sky have pulled up to demonstrate young Joe’s prowess? What I discovered was jaw-dropping.

Here’s a link to a list of the fastest batsmen to reach 3000 runs in test history. It includes batsmen of all nationalities from every era. You’ll see that Joe Root is actually the second fastest batsmen – in terms of time elapsed since his debut – to score 3000 runs in the history of test cricket. He’s accomplished the feat in just 2 years and 313 days. It’s a remarkable achievement.

Why didn’t Sky put up this list instead? It’s a lot more interesting than a narrow table merely charting the age of players from a single country to reach 3,000 runs. Age is pretty much irrelevant. It’s speed – in other words how long it takes a batsman to reach a particular milestone – that matters more.

At this point, I bet you’re dying to know who was top of this all time list. Might this explain why Sky preferred the irrelevant list that put Cook top? Was it Bradman? Nope. Was it Viv Richards? Nope. Lara? Afraid not. Tendulkar? Wrong again. The answer is …. *drumroll* … Kevin Pietersen. Ah. He who must not be named.

Regular readers of this blog will know I criticised Pietersen for the way he got out sometimes, but the facts speak for themselves: KP took just 2 years and 150 days to score 3,000 test runs – a sensational achievement. Bradman took over four years – although obviously they played fewer matches back in the 1920s and 30s so it’s not exactly a fair comparison.

However, before we start paying homage to Pietersen (again at Root’s expense) I should stress that the years / months / days it takes for a player to score 3,000 runs isn’t actually the most important measurement either. It’s the number of innings that really counts. This levels the playing field: everyone has the same chance to top the list.

Although Bradman comes out on top (worldwide) in the category that really matters, Root is the top Englishman of the last sixty years. Joe has reached the milestone of 3,000 test runs in just 62 innings – a staggering effort. No wonder his average is a brilliant 57. In accomplishing this feat, Root has surpassed all his English contemporaries. The only person who’s close to Root is Pietersen (who took one innings more).

Here’s a list of the fastest Englishmen to 3,000 test runs in the modern era. This is the table that Ian Ward should’ve been talking about at lunch …

Root 62 innings

Pietersen 63

Trott 67

Vaughan 69

Cook 73

Trescothick 74

Strauss 75.

What’s particularly interesting is that Root’s stats compare extremely favourably with any batsman in the world. For example, he’s beaten the record breaking Steve Smith, his rival at the top of the ICC rankings, by a single innings too.

In fact, Root is the fifth fastest batsman to reach 3,000 runs worldwide since the 1980s. Suddenly, the argument about whether Root is the best young player England have had in recent times becomes somewhat irrelevant. The stats place him in the top five in the whole world! The English context actually belittles his achievements.

Here’s a list of the fastest twenty players to reach 3,000 test runs in the last 40 years.

Lara 52 innings

Viv Richards 54

Sehwag 55

Hayden 61

Root 62

Gilchrist 63

G Smith 63

Pietersen 63

M Hussey 63

S Smith 63

Azharuddin 64

Jayawardene 65

Gavaskar 66

Miandad 66

Warner 66

Tendulkar 67

Dravid 67

Trott 67

Sangakarra 68

M Clarke 69

Look at the names below Root in this table: there’s Tendulkar, Sangakarra, Gavaskar and Gilchrist for a start. Ponting and Kallis didn’t even make the top twenty.

Root’s achievements are therefore absolutely mind-boggling. Statistically there’s no doubt whatsoever that Joe Root is England’s best young player of the modern era. If one goes back further in time, only Ken Barrington has reached 3,000 test runs in fewer innings since the war (and that was only one innings fewer). Indeed, Root has been one of the best young players in the world over the last 40 years full stop.

But did Sky discuss all this? No. They simply put up a table showing that Root is second best to Cook in an irrelevant category that means little in reality. The takeaway for casual viewers who haven’t done their homework is that Root is second best to Cook. This does Joe a huge disservice. Why should his achievements be eclipsed by the ubiquitous cult of Cook?

In every other meaningful category imaginable (batting average, innings taken etc) Root exceeds not only the England captain but every other English batsman of modern times. Pietersen is the only player that comes close. It’s time that someone banged the drum.

Basically Joe Root is an absolute gem. He could become England’s first truly great test match batsmen since the likes of Compton, Hobbs, Hammond, Hutton and Barrington. The only thing that can stop him is his worrying back injury.

Joe Root is the key man in English cricket’s future. The second most important is probably his physio. If the latter can keep the former on the field then history beckons.

James Morgan