England Complete 3-0 Sweep of Pakistan as Joe Root Passes Tendulkar's Fifty Record

A CHASE THAT GOT AWKWARD BEFORE IT GOT EASY

England only needed 130 to win the third Test at Edgbaston and complete a clean sweep of Pakistan, and for a few overs on the fourth morning it looked like Pakistan might make them sweat for it. Mohammad Abbas removed both England openers inside the first over of the chase, and a couple of dropped chances and no-balls from Pakistan's attack were the only thing that kept the target from getting genuinely tense. Joe Root and Jordan Cox settled things from there, adding an unbroken stand that carried England home by eight wickets before lunch on day four. Root finished unbeaten on 62 off 69 balls with nine fours, and Cox stayed not out on 59, his third half-century of the series.

PAKISTAN'S FIGHTBACK THAT ALMOST WASN'T ENOUGH

The chase was only that small because of what Pakistan produced in their second innings after conceding a big first-innings deficit to England's 453. Bowled out cheaply the first time around, Pakistan responded with 449, built on Shan Masood's 95, Babar Azam's 76 and a genuinely remarkable ninth-wicket stand. Razaullah, who had already contributed with the ball, smashed nine sixes on the way to 81, and found an unlikely ally in tailender Mohammad Abbas as the pair put on 121 runs together, dragging Pakistan from a position of collapse to one that at least made England bat again. It was not enough to prevent the whitewash, but it turned what could have been a formality into a genuine contest for two days.

ROOT MOVES PAST TENDULKAR

Root's unbeaten fifty in the chase was his 69th in Test cricket, moving him past Sachin Tendulkar's long-standing mark of 68 for the most half-centuries in the format's history. The milestone came in the same innings in which Root also passed 1,000 Test runs at Edgbaston, adding a personal landmark to a scoreline that was already going England's way. Root has spent the past several years steadily climbing the all-time run charts, and passing a Tendulkar record, even a fifty count rather than the headline centuries tally, is the kind of marker that will get attached to his name for the rest of his career.

THE NUMBERS BEHIND THE SWEEP

England's bowling was the foundation of the 3-0 result across all three Tests, and Ollie Robinson was named Player of the Series after taking 21 wickets at an average of 8.76, a return that ranks among the more dominant series-long bowling performances in recent Test cricket. Across the three matches Pakistan were repeatedly made to bat twice from difficult positions, and while the Edgbaston second innings showed what the tourists were capable of when their middle and lower order clicked, it came too late in the series and too late in the match to change the result.

WHAT'S NEXT

For Pakistan, the fightback at Edgbaston at least offers something to build from before their next assignment, a reminder that the batting lineup has more resilience than the first-innings collapse suggested. For England, the sweep extends a strong home season and adds another data point to Root's case as one of the format's great modern accumulators, with the individual landmarks piling up almost as a byproduct of a team that is simply winning most of the time it plays Test cricket at home.