Ben Stokes was waiting near the English dug-out as Joe Root walked off the Gabba late on Thursday night. "Yes Joee.." he yelled out as Root neared the ropes at the Vulture Street end, still holding his bat aloft towards the big section of English fans in the Members' Area.

Root was in the zone, like he seemed to be in the middle across nearly three full sessions of the first day's play. He barely turned towards his dug-out or his captain. Instead, he walked straight towards a young Australian fan waiting to click a selfie with the English batting legend, just by the entrance to the English dressing-room. And then disappeared into the tunnel.

Like it was simply another day in the office. And not a profound one, where Root had finally brought one of the most talked about ruts to an end. He had finally scored the elusive Test ton on Australian soil. It was probably a sign of how this moment may have meant a bit more to his teammates, fans and to all in English cricket, than it did to Joe Root himself.

Not that he didn't understand the gravitas of it. Or that he didn't celebrate the milestone with great enthusiasm. But straight from his shrug after having got to his maiden away Ashes century, to the way he went about resurrecting England's shaky innings, Root didn't seem to make as big a deal of it as everyone else.

Like there always was this inevitability that it will happen someday. As inevitable as Mitchell Starc running in and picking up another big bag of wickets with the pink Kookaburra.

Root, you never thought, would end up going through his career without getting a three-figure score in this part of the world. It was only a case of when and not if. Day 1 of the crucial second Ashes Test at the Gabba in December 2025 simply turned out to be the setting for it.

He was already a great batter. He probably didn't need to necessarily score a ton for that to change. But it's safe to say that now he's just become greater, in every estimation possible.

The sense that Root's time to tick that long-pending box is here for sure could be picked up from watching him train as well. Rather specifically. There were enough signs before the Perth Test, where he worked so diligently on finding a way to work around his most natural tendency to guide balls outside off-stump towards third with a horizontal bat. It might not have worked against Mitchell Starc in both innings there, but rather than get too vexed by it like he might have been even as recently as England's last tour here in 2021-22, he looked unfazed with the double failure in Perth.

He sounded pretty undaunted by it as well. How often would the second highest Test run-getter of all time after all have had to repeatedly say, "I know I'm a good batter" while answering questions about his lack of a century in Australia.

While he did obsess a bit over facing left-arm throwdowns during England's first training session at the Gabba last Sunday, Root soon settled into his trademark rhythm over the following few days.

Whether it was him working away on his subtle adjustments to combat the different Aussie bowlers, from stepping down the pitch against Scott Boland to playing more fierce cut shots off the others, late into the night. Or if it was him under the harsh Brisbane sun, facing hundreds of throwdowns from Jeetan Patel and Marcus Trescothick to simply master one shot, where his bat comes down a lot straighter and pushes the ball to the ground against deliveries on and around a virtual fourth stump. To eliminate the risk of a repeat of what's become a characteristic dismissal for Root across the last four trips here to Australia.

Even then, it's the coaches who've seemed more excited by Root's excellence in developing a new strategy. And while they've yelled out multiple plaudits to him from, "Yesss Joe, you bloody legend" to "There he is, Joe Root ladies and gentlemen", Root's reactions have at best ranged between a polite nod to an even politer, "That did feel good."

And you could almost imagine the 34-year-old having muttered the same words to himself as he finally righted the one wrong in his illustrious Test batting career on Thursday evening under the shimmering Gabba lights.

For the record, it took 12 years since his first Test there for Ricky Ponting to make his first Test ton on Indian soil. He finally breached it in Bengaluru in 2008, in what was his 15th innings there. It's taken Root double the number of innings though to notch up his first Aussie Test ton. But even though the drought has spanned the same number of years, it's felt a lot longer. Probably because of the incessant level of scrutiny on Root every time he's come to these shores.

But through it all, you never quite doubted that Joe Root wouldn't be able to get over the line at some point. For, Joe Root certainly had no doubt about it.