In 2014, the late, great former New Zealand captain Martin Crowe proved prophetic when he proclaimed Joe Root, Virat Kohli, Steve Smith and Kane Williamson to be "Test cricket's young Fab Four" in a column for ESPNcricinfo .
At the time, Root was the only one who averaged above 41 in Test matches and none of them had been ranked as the best batter in the world. "All four have similar talent, hunger, ambition and responsibility," Crowe wrote.
"All four will go on to captain their countries. All four will reach peak form in a few years' time, and then the real battle will commence as to who will be the No. 1 batsman in the world. My sense is that they will all take turns as the No. 1 Test batsman."
And he could not have been more right, with all four amassing more than 7,000 Test runs and Root's current average of 49.57 now the lowest among the quartet. However, former India cricketer turned selector Saba Karim believes Root is now "far ahead" of the other members of the 'Fab Four'.
Since 2021, Root has been in brilliant form despite the added pressures of captaining a struggling side until he quit as skipper in April. In his first Test without the captaincy against New Zealand at Lord's, Root scored a match-winning hundred and became just the 14th player to reach 10,000 Test runs.
That innings further underlined Root's quality and Karim believes he has surpassed the likes of Kohli, Smith and Williamson. At the start of 2021, those three had scored 27, 26 and 24 Test hundreds respectively while Root had made just 17.
However, since then Root has scored nine hundreds to move up to 26, while Kohli, Smith and Williamson have all failed to score a single century. "He has gone far ahead," Karim told India News Sports .
"If we see England's batting, only Joe Root's name is coming up again and again. It means Joe Root has not got support from the other end.
"If we talk about India, with Virat Kohli there is always support like KL Rahul, Rohit Sharma, Rishabh Pant among other. That is the situation in New Zealand and Australia too.
"Even in overseas conditions like in India or in Sri Lanka, Root has singlehandedly won England matches. Joe Root has left the other three batters far behind in the last two years. Whether we talk about consistency, technique or temperament, in all these aspects Joe Root is above everyone at the moment."
