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#4 Joe Root (England)
Joe Root, current Test Captain of England cricket team, was born on 30th December 1990. He belongs to a cricket family where his grandfather played in Yorkshire league and his younger brother is an MCC young player.
Root received various scholarships also involving cricket scholarships. He made his debut for Yorkshire second team in 2007 at the age of just of 17 years and also scored a fifty.
Root continued to perform well in U-19 matches and was considered to be the next wonder boy of cricket. He soon signed a 3-year contract with Yorkshire and made his debut in 2011. He scored 222 in his second season which was the breakthrough season for him. Root was performing consistently in county cricket and soon got his maiden call-up for the Test team in the historic 2012 tour of India where England won the Test series against host India.
He batted very well in Nagpur against India spin quartet of Ashwin, Jadeja, Pragyan Ojha, and Piyush Chawla. He helped England recover from a tough situation and played for more than 4.5 hours and scored 73 runs to bring out a draw.
He also performed decently in ODI series scoring a half-century and a couple of scores of above 30. Then against New Zealand, Root and his Yorkshire teammate Bairstow stiched a century stand at Headingley to bail out England from a tough situation and also scored his maiden test century in the process and helped England win the match.
Root was ready for another stern examination, Ashes 2013, in which he performed exceedingly well and also scored a monumental 180 in the second innings of Lord's Test. He performed well in the series and England defeated their arch-rivals by 3-0. He continued his form in Champions Trophy and was the highest scorer for England.
Just before the Ashes, he was involved in an altercation with Warner, in which Warner allegedly punched him. As Michael Carberry was selected as an opener with Cook, Root moved to his previous position of No.6 though he later moved to top order as Trott pulled out due to stress-related illness.
He did not have a great Ashes but selectors showed faith in him and selected him for ODIs against West Indies. Root repaid selectors' faith and performed well in the series and also scored his maiden century in 4th ODI. But after his stellar performances, he had to leave the tour midway and also missed the World T20 due to injury in his hand.
He continued his great batting in 2014 by performing excellently against Sri Lanka when he scored an unbeaten 200 at Lord's.
He raised in performances further in the 2015 ashes and scored 460 runs at an average of 57.5 with two centuries. Root truly arrived when he scored his best score of 254 against Pakistan at Lord's and was considered to be part of Fab Four.
Root was the player on which England depended most on their 2016 tour to India alongside Cook. Although he scored a century in the first Test, he was not able to convert his fifties to centuries in the further matches and scored 491 runs at an average of 49.10 in the five-match series.
Root was then handed the captaincy of test team in February 2017 after Cook decided to step down completing his four-year stint as captain. He was successful in his first series as captain against South Africa as he scored a fair amount of runs and also led the team to victory.
He also led the team to the series victory against West Indies. Though experts were not sure about his strong influence on the field and the best way to test it was an away series.
Ashes, an important series for any England captain, was Root next series and that too in Australia. Following the trend, the Home team, Australia, went on to win the series and Root's captaincy was questioned and also his inability of converting 50s to100s which also continued in India's tour to England.
Root is regarded as one of the best players of red ball cricket but he still needs to prove his credentials in limited overs cricket. He mostly plays the role of anchor in limited overs format due to the presence of the other explosive batsmen in the XI.
He still needs to improve his limited overs cricket and pace at which he scores the runs which may also help him in earning an IPL contract, which he has been unable to do till now.
He is the mainstay of England's middle order and he soon needs to improve his limited overs performance with the World Cup 2019 not too far and help England end their drought of 50 over WC trophy.
