THE rise of Joe Root has become a quite amazing phenomenon.

The fresh-faced cricketer from the Dore area of Sheffield has blossomed this Spring in a way that few could have expected.

His rise through the ranks with Yorkshire has been evenly-paced and, at 22, the right-hand batsman and occasional practitioner of the art of off-break bowling is now a first-team mainstay.

It is a status that has been steadily and studiously earned, but all of a sudden Root’s selection as England Lions captain and his prolific run scoring has propelled him into the spotlight.

Here we are in mid-May and Root’s latest offering of 179 for the Lions against the touring New Zealanders has gone down as his second-lowest score of the season so far!

He has now accumulated 646 runs and the chances of him passing 1,000 by the end of May must be proving nerve- tinglingly tantalising even to this outwardly most level-headed of young cricket stars.

Only eight players have done it, with Graeme Hick the last in 1988, while one Don Bradman achieved the feat twice, in 1930 and 1938.

However, if anyone can meet the asking rate, it will probably be Root.

Last season, when Yorkshire reached the Champions League Twenty20 finals in South Africa, Root was selected in one match as the man to be wired for sound and to talk to the commentators during the game.

At the time he was 21, but Root, it has to be said, looked a deal younger and it is fair to say he was very unlikely to be pestered to become the face of either Gillette or Wilkinson Sword.

Anyone in the media trade will tell you that interviewing youngsters can be a very trying business, with responses being at best, mechanically delivered over-rehearsed cliches and at worst, morosely monotoned monosyllables.

However, the boy Root was not only bright and breezy, he was very informative and even up for a bit of humorous banter despite all the while concentrating on his fielding duties – clearly a young man apart from the rest.

So when Alistair Cook took the England reins from Andrew Strauss last summer at the age of 28 and some of us assumed we had our skipper for the next half decade or more, it appears we might have made an incorrect assumption.

Watch out for Joe Cool!