Joe Root’s golden ODI run could not have come at a better time for England
At 35, Joe Root is in the best one-day form of his career. His unbeaten 99 at Cardiff was only the latest reminder before England and India settle their series at Lord’s.
Jul 18, 2026
England’s one-day side has spent much of the past year being written off, and for stretches of this India series they have looked the part. What has kept them upright is a 35-year-old who was supposed to be winding down, not peaking. Joe Root walked off unbeaten on 99 at Cardiff on Thursday, and it felt less like a surprise than the latest instalment of a run that has quietly made him England’s most dependable batter in the format.
A streak without a soft patch
The 99 was Root’s fifth successive score of fifty or more in one-day internationals, the sort of sequence that tends to belong to a batter in his mid-twenties rather than one closing in on 36. Since the start of 2025 he has gathered runs at an average north of 70, a return that leaves him among the very few players anywhere to have passed a thousand ODI runs in that stretch. This is not a veteran hanging on for a send-off. It is a player in the best 50-over form of his career.
What makes it work is how little fuss is attached to it. Root does not overpower attacks so much as take them apart, rotating strike, finding the gaps, rarely offering up the risk that gets him out cheaply. At Cardiff he faced 133 balls for his 99 and hit only nine fours, an innings built on placement rather than power, and England got home anyway.
The records keep coming
The Cardiff innings left him with an oddity that will follow him around: he became the first England batter to finish an ODI unbeaten on 99, stranded a run short of a hundred by a chase that ended before he could get back on strike. Numbers of a happier kind have been stacking up too. He is now the third England batter to pass a thousand ODI runs against India, and among batters with a serious body of work he has edged ahead of Virat Kohli for the best average in successful run chases, sitting behind only MS Dhoni on that list.
Chasing is where Root has built his case. The 99 came in a run chase, England hauling down their target at Cardiff with him steering it from one end, and it fit a pattern years in the making. For a batter whose name was made in Test cricket, this late flowering in the white-ball game has been one of the softer-spoken stories of the English summer.
A decider that runs through him
All of which brings England to Lord’s on Sunday, the series level at 1-1 and a fairly clear idea of where their innings needs anchoring. India will know it too. Remove Root early and England’s middle order looks a good deal more brittle; let him settle and the game has a habit of drifting away, one nudged single at a time. At 35 he ought to be the one being planned around by younger men. Instead he is still the player everyone else has to work out.