![Joe Root accomplishes final hurdle [Source: @ICC/X.com]](https://onecricketnews.akamaized.net/parth-editor/oc-dashboard/news-images-prod/1764954948795_Joe_Root_England_Ashes_2025.jpg?type=hq)
Joe Root accomplishes final hurdle [Source: @ICC/X.com]
For more than a decade, there was one lonely box sitting unchecked on Joe Root’s otherwise gold-plated resume. He had hundreds in Asia, runs in the Caribbean heat, and masterclasses in English cloud and New Zealand swing.
He had led, failed, learned, reinvented, and conquered. He had become England’s greatest modern-day Test batter, perhaps their greatest, full stop.
And yet, for all the poetry in his bat, Australia refused to give Joe Root a stanza. Until, finally, the Gabba blinked.
Joe Root finally conquers his final challenge
Under the lights of the Ashes 2025 day/night Test, with the pink ball skidding, nipping, and testing mortal limits, Joe Root lifted the weight of 12 years with a flick behind square.
There was no primal roar. No dramatic release. Just a shrug, an ironic, understated, perfectly Joe Root. As if to say, “That’s that, then.”
But that moment was anything but ordinary. It was the final piece in a puzzle that had begun back in 2013 when a 22-year-old Root, fresh-faced and fearless, walked onto the same ground for his first Ashes tour.
He didn’t know then that Australia would become his most personal battlefield.
Joe Root couldn’t have imagined that this one country, not the bowlers, not the conditions, but the land itself, would deny him the one thing he seemed destined to do everywhere else, which is to score a hundred.
And that’s why this innings at Brisbane was not just about numbers on a scoreboard. It was about legacy.
Joe Root ticks the final box on a legendary career checklist
For years, Root’s greatness came with a strange footnote: No Test hundred in Australia. Opposing fans clung to it. Critics sharpened it. Analysts dissected it.
It followed him in press conferences and trailed him like an unwanted shadow during every Australian tour. No matter how many centuries he scored elsewhere, there was always that lingering “but…”.
At the Gabba, that “but” died. And fittingly, it came in chaos. England were wobbling at 5/2. The pink ball was alive. Mitchell Starc was breathing fire. The stadium rumbled.
Joe Root walked in like a man who had seen this movie far too many times. Early edges fell short. A drop followed. The nerves were visible, the movements less than fluent, and the timing not quite settled.
But then came the quiet resistance. The little taps. The soft hands. The nudges into gaps. The familiar Rootian rhythm returned, ball by ball, like a heartbeat finding its pace again.
He built. He endured. He waited. And then, when the moment came, he didn’t chase it but allowed it to arrive.
By the time he reached three figures, Joe Root had outlasted Australia and outlived a version of himself, the man who kept falling short here.
This century wasn’t just a milestone. It was a release. It was an unlocking of something psychological that had wrapped itself around his Australian voyages for far too long.
The century that freed Joe Root
What makes this even more profound is the timing. At 34, with the twilight of his career somewhere on the horizon, Joe Root is no longer the young prodigy or the overburdened captain.
He is the seasoned master who understands that greatness isn’t defined by perfection, but by persistence. By the refusal to let an undefeated problem remain undefeated forever.
And make no mistake. This was a personal Ashes victory as much as it was a match-defining one.
There will, of course, be context applied. No Pat Cummins. No Josh Hazlewood. No Nathan Lyon. Pink ball conditions. A different Australian attack.
And maybe those arguments carry some tactical truth. But cricket doesn’t care for footnotes when it comes to the contribution of the soul. Joe Root didn’t choose the opposition. He faced what stood in front of him, and for the first time in over a decade, he won that contest on Australian soil.
Final thought
In doing so, Joe Root completed his global empire as a batter.
The man who once carried England through endless rebuilds now carried a nation’s emotional baggage off his own shoulders. Teammates felt it.
Ben Stokes felt it. Every England fan who had watched him almost, nearly, heartbreakingly miss out in the past felt it too.
Perhaps the most beautiful part of it all is that Root didn’t change after doing it. He didn’t signal any grand arrival because, in his mind, he was always here. Australia had just taken a little longer to figure it out.
So now the record books will read, “Joe Root - century in Australia, 2025.”
Simple. Clean. Full circle. And for one of the finest bats England has ever known, the final box has finally been, and rightfully, ticked.
