Gary Ballance column

Joe Root’s 182 against Durham on Saturday was definitely one of the best innings I have ever seen.

It is always difficult to post a score like that – and even more so in the fourth innings when the pressure is really on. To do what he did was fantastic.

Most people will already know just how good a player he is but he will only have reinforced that to them by scoring those kind of runs to help his team win a match. As I say, the pressure is usually far greater when it comes to the fourth innings of a match.

To go up to Durham, who are one of the tougher teams to play against in the division, and knock off 336 during the final day was an unbelievable effort from the whole team and not just Rooty. We had a number of key partnerships throughout the day.

We knew it was going to be tough to get the highest score of the game in the fourth innings but we did really believe we could do it.

The pitch was not easy. It was doing a bit against a quality bowling attack. But we knew that if we played like we know we can and one guy batted through, we were in with a great chance.

We were quite surprised Durham declared when they did on Friday evening. The weather did not do them any favours by preventing them from upping the scoring rate.

They were obviously keen to have a crack at us with the new ball before the close to try and get a couple of wickets and make it a lot harder for us and there will be times when it works out well for you as a team.

Comparisons will be made with last season’s win against Gloucestershire at Bristol when we chased down 400 during the final day.

They are both unbelievable victories to chase down big scores but to do it when we are back in the first division against the likes of Onions and Rushworth probably does ensure the win comes up better than last year’s.

Hopefully we can gain some momentum from it. Having not started the season too well with the bat, we have now shown just what we can do if one guy takes responsibility and goes through.

There may be a couple of England or Lions squads to be announced shortly but it is not something that I or any of the other lads have been thinking about. You saw that Rooty was just thinking about winning games for Yorkshire, which is the way to go.