Joe Root is England’s greatest batsman of all time regardless of when he breaks Alastair Cook’s Test runs record, writes NASSER HUSSAIN

Whether Joe Root overtakes Alastair Cook’s England Test record of 12,472 runs in this match or the next, we already know we are dealing with perhaps this country’s greatest ever batsman.

It’s difficult to compare eras, and I can only comment on the players I’ve seen, but Root combines the flair of Kevin Pietersen, the penchant for match-defining innings of Graham Gooch and the hunger for runs of Cook.

He has ticked all the boxes you expect from a great batsman. You are there to score points, win games for your country, show people how much it means and be an ambassador for the sport. Root did that over a very long period of time.

What I also like is that he has kept the promise he made to himself as a young boy at Sheffield Collegiate: if he ever played for England, he would always remember the joy that cricket has brought him.

Yes, he is elegant to look at, and the rhythm of his percussion is incredible. But it is remarkable that he has kept a smile on his face throughout 146 Tests, when it is easy to be brought down by your own form or the captaincy.

Root, 33, was Player of the Series when England defeated Sri Lanka at home earlier this year

He is a very good player with pace and a great player with spin, as he has shown in Sri Lanka and India. And he has answered critics who questioned his conversion rate from fifty to hundreds, with four centuries in 2024 alone.

The only gap on his CV is big runs in Australia, which he can rectify on their beautiful fields next winter. Perhaps he has occasionally run into trouble trying to play that little bit through the cordon, which gives him so many runs in England, but can get stuck on the bouncy surfaces down there.

But he’s only getting better, and I like the way he responded to the criticism he got for going to the reverse scoop in Rajkot in February.

At the start of the summer I had a feeling there would be a correlation between the number of reverse scoops he played and the extent to which Bazball England did their batting reset. Well, he hasn’t played much and since Rajkot he has averaged 75.

Root has scored 12,402 runs in 267 innings during his Test career since his debut in 2012

Alastair Cook, 39, is currently England’s leading Test run scorer with 12,472 in 291 innings

I think both he and England have realized that he is too good a player to take such risks. Yes, the shot got him points, but why not let Ben Duckett, Zak Crawley and Jamie Smith play the big players, and let Root play his own world-class game.

He has already overtaken Cook’s 33 Test hundreds, but I only hope Root will go well beyond his run tally too – and underline why he is England’s generational talent with the bat.