What Sunil Gavaskar Once Said About Achieving The Rare Feat: Joe Root Joins the 10,000 Club. Root, 31, is the only one of that select group of run scorers who is still playing Test cricket. Sunil Gavaskar, a legend of the Indian cricket team, was the first to join the exclusive club.
Joe Root, the former captain of England’s cricket team, became only the 14th batter to reach 10,000 Test runs when he scored 115* against New Zealand at Lord’s on Sunday. Root, 31, is the only one of that select group of run scorers who is still playing Test cricket. Sunil Gavaskar of the Indian cricket team was the first to join the exclusive club. Gavaskar scored his 10,000th Test run against Pakistan in Ahmedabad on March 7, 1987.
Gavaskar scored his 10,000th Test run off Pakistan spinner Ijaz Faqih’s bowling. As Gavaskar became the first player to reach the historic mark, play was briefly halted as the Ahmedabad crowd rushed onto the field to congratulate the legend.
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Sunil Gavaskar becomes the first batter in Test history to score 10,000 runs.
RARE VIDEO
Sunil Gavaskar scored his 10000th run in the Ahmedabad Test when he played a late-cut off Ijaz Fakih in 1987.
Gavaskar became the first cricketer to scale the Mount Everest — 10000 Test runs
Courtesy: @Zohaib1981 pic.twitter.com/c8Vqd2tla8— Sarang Bhalerao (@bhaleraosarang) February 19, 2021
Gavaskar once told Indian Express about the feat and the joy of becoming the first person to enter the 10,000 club: “I knew that I needed 57 runs.” I don’t usually look at the scoreboard. However, when you reach 50, you receive applause. At that point, you realize. If I’m not mistaken, I hit 50 on a single. So I was aware that there were now 7 more runs.
Root is now a member of the elite club. Root’s current Test batting average is just under 50, the mark of an all-time great, and his 26 hundreds at this level are only surpassed for England by the retired Sir Alastair Cook’s 33. And Sunday’s innings suggest there will be plenty more runs to come, with Root now free of what he described as a “very unhealthy relationship” with England’s captaincy.
“It is absolutely magical once you reach 10,000. It was magical because it had never been done before. Even 9,000 had never been done before, and I accomplished it. However, 9,000 is a four-digit number. Because 10,000 is a five-digit number, it was almost as if I was climbing Mt Everest for the first time.”
Also Read: Joe Root becomes the joint-youngest batter in history to reach 10,000 test runs.