England captain Joe Root will go into his 100th Test on Friday determined not to let his individual battles distract him from his larger goal of leading his side to a series victory in India, the 30-year-old said on Thursday.
Root has been in scintillating batting from, having scored a double-century and a century in his last two Tests in Sri Lanka and one of the sub-plots of four-Test series will be a batting one-upmanship between him and his India counterpart, Virat Kohli.
"It is silly not to watch how they go about things ... how they manage their own games and keep evolving and getting better all the time, and then try and add that to my own game," Root told a video conference.
"In terms of those individual battles, for me that's not the most important thing. It's not something that I will look at, what I will look is always trying to win this series," he added.
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Root is also England's best batsman against spin bowling and his duel will R. Ashwin will be another point of interest in the series.
"He's a fine bowler, he's got great record in India, and is probably full of confidence. I've played against him before, scored some runs, and he's probably had the better of me a couple of times as well. It's going to be a great little battle within the Test match," Root said of the off-spinner.
Former England opener Geoffrey Boycott has said Root can go on to play 200 tests and eclipse Sachin Tendulkar's record of 15,921 runs in the format. However, Root said he was not looking that far.
"It's taken a long time to play these 100 Test matches ... and it will take a long time to potentially do that again," he said.
"To get anywhere near him, I have to play a hell of a lot more test cricket and right now I just got to concentrate on trying to be the best I can."
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