On Thursday, all the Indian Premier League (IPL) franchises finalized the list of retained and released players for the upcoming season. All the released cricketers will again be auctioned next month while there will also be a few names which went unsold in the previous edition. Surprisingly, England’s Test skipper Joe Root couldn’t manage to find any buyer and had to stay from the tournament. However, he is scoring runs in the Asia now and has earned a worthy praise from the former Indian cricketer Sourav Ganguly.
Root is currently in Sri Lanka playing in the ongoing three-match Test series. The second Test is underway and Root has led his team from the front by scoring a scintillating century in the second innings. In the three innings before this one, he had got starts but had failed to convert. This time around, the skipper came out to bat with his team two down effectively on 31 runs.
With the pitch turning square, Sri Lanka would’ve hoped to bundle out the Englishmen on the third day as batting fourth will be near impossible on such a surface. But Root had other ideas. He stitched important partnerships with most of the batsmen who joined him in the middle and churned out runs with sweeps and reverse sweeps on a consistent basis. He eventually reached his ton and was dismissed on 124 runs off just 146 balls which has given England a chance of sealing the series.
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Joe Root’s knock was certainly one of the best of his career as he proved his mettle while playing against some decent spin bowling. He has always been the best England player in tackling spin threat but wasn’t able to walk the talk as he did on Friday. Meanwhile, Ganguly was thrilled to witness the special knock from the England skipper and lauded him for his exceptional batting. But interestingly he tagged one of the owners of the Delhi Daredevils and his very good friend, Parth Jindal, in his tweet and indirectly hinted to pick Root in the IPL auction next month.
“What a performance from joe root and england on that surface ..one of the best test hundreds one will see on a pitch which is turning square .. @root66 @ParthJindal11 @ECB_cricket,” his tweet read.
Here’s Ganguly’s tweet:
What a performance from joe root and england on that surface ..one of the best test hundreds one will see on a pitch which is turning square .. @root66 @ParthJindal11 @ECB_cricket
— Sourav Ganguly (@SGanguly99) November 16, 2018
