Though England ended up on the losing side against Sri Lanka at the third and final Test of the series at the Oval, they won the series by 2-1 and their star batter Joe Root was not only awarded with the Player of the Series award but also with the Player of the Summer award following his incredible performances in Test cricket throughout the summer.
A fine century by Pathum Nissanka and an inspired effort by Sri Lankan bowlers in the second innings helped the Lankan Lions in achieving the target of 219 with rather ease and secure an 8-wicket win over the Three Lions.
This is Sri Lanka’s fourth win at England and their first in the country in 10 years. This is also the highest successful run chase by an Asian country in England, outdoing Pakistan’s chase of 180 runs against Australia in 2010.
Speaking after the defeat, Root said that his side has played some fine cricket throughout the summer at home against West Indies and Sri Lanka and added that it feels nice to have contributed to both series wins.
“It is what you pride yourself on as a senior player and as a batter. Great to see this team constantly finding new ways to look at the game and keep evolving and keep getting better. To see some new faces come in and put their best foot forward shows the depth that we’ve got within this format in English cricket. I feel good, you know how fickle this game is, you have to keep working. Try and work as hard as I can to get better,” Root said.
“I love playing in this team, great lads, play some really exciting cricket. Turn up every day wanting to get stuck in because of the way we go about it. The last few years have been the most enjoyable of my career and long may that continue. May the success of this team continue as well. I think we came up against different conditions in this game. As a team, we try to keep finding ways to put pressure on the opposition but unfortunately for us, it didn’t come off this game,” Root added.
Root played incredibly well throughout the summer. In 6 games across Test series against West Indies and Sri Lanka, Root scored 666 runs in 10 innings at an average of 74.00, with 3 hundreds and fifties each. Despite failing to score big in the final Test, Root ended the Sri Lanka series as the top-scorer with 375 runs at an average of 75.00.
In the ongoing World Test Championship 2023/25 cycle, Root is the leading run-scorer with 1,398 runs at an average of 53.76, with 5 centuries and 6 fifties in 29 innings. His highest score is 143 so far.
