Joe Root is arguably England’s greatest batter of all time, and on Monday (January 5) in the ongoing fifth and final Test of the 2025-26 Ashes series, he is playing probably the best knock of his career in Australia. The right-handed batter from Yorkshire, who turned 35 on December 30, 2025, was batting on 150 runs from 226 balls at the end of 89 overs in England’s first innings of the ongoing red-ball match at Sydney Cricket Ground.
Root, who before England’s ongoing tour had not managed to score even one century in Australia, reached the 150-run mark by taking a single on the last ball of the 89th over bowled by Mitchell Starc.
The score of 150 by Root on Monday is his 17th 150-plus score in Tests for the English team, and he is now fifth in the list
of batters with the most 150-plus scores in Tests.
The record of scoring more than 150 runs in one innings of a Test match the most number of times is in the name of batting legend Sachin Tendulkar. During his 24-year-long Test career for India from 1989 to 2013, Tendulkar played 200 Tests and slammed 51 centuries. He crossed the 150-run mark 20 times in the five-day format of the game for the Indian team.
Tendulkar is followed by Brian Lara and Kumar Sangakkara (both have 19 scores of 150+ in Tests) and Sir Don Bradman (18).
Most 150-plus scores in Tests
| PLAYER | COUNTRY | MATCHES | 100s | 150+ SCORES | BEST SCORE |
| Sachin Tendulkar | India | 200 | 51 | 20 | 248* |
| Brian Lara | West Indies | 131 | 34 | 19 | 400* |
| Kumar Sangakkara | Sri Lanka | 134 | 38 | 19 | 319 |
| Don Bradman | Australia | 52 | 29 | 18 | 334 |
| Joe Root | England | 163* | 41* | 17 | 262 |
| Mahela Jayawardene | Sri Lanka | 149 | 34 | 16 | 374 |
| Ricky Ponting | Australia | 168 | 41 | 15 | 257 |
| Jacques Kallis | South Africa | 166 | 45 | 14 | 224 |
| Virender Sehwag | India | 104 | 23 | 14 | 319 |
| Steve Waugh | Australia | 168 | 32 | 14 | 200 |
If Root manages to score at least 71 more runs in the ongoing match, then he will become the second batter in the world after Tendulkar to join the 14,000 Test run club. As of now, only Tendulkar has scored more than 14,000 runs in the traditional format of the game, which was first played in 1877 between England and Australia at Melbourne Cricket Ground.
In the history of Test cricket, so far only five non-Australian batters have managed to score a double century in Tests played at Sydney Cricket Ground, and on Monday, Root will have a chance to join that elite list.
Of those five non-Australian players who have a Test double century to their credit at SCG, two belong to England, but the last Englishman to cross the 200-run mark at SCG was Wally Hammond in December 1936.
