England's playing XI will wear a lopsided look at The Oval: there's Joe Root, and then there's everyone else. Root has played 164 Tests. And the rest have played 117 together. Here's a bunch of curious numbers that have cropped up as a result of the imbalance.
281 - Number of Test caps in England's XI at The Oval, the fewest for them going into a men's Test since 2009 when they had 272 for the Lord's Test against West Indies.
47 - Difference between the number of Tests Joe Root (164) has played and what the rest of England's playing XI (117) has. It is the second-biggest such difference in a Test match.
The highest is 51 when Frank Woolley was by far England's most experienced player against New Zealand in 1930 in Christchurch. That match was New Zealand's first Test, and featured six debutants in England's XI, while four other England players had just one cap each. Woolley had played 55 Tests by then.
193 - The total number of wickets between England's bowlers at The Oval, the fewest for them going into a men's Test match since the 2010 Mirpur Test against Bangladesh, where they had a combined tally of 188 wickets.
The last men's Test at home where England's playing XI has had fewer than 200 Test wickets was against India in 2007, also at The Oval (169).
Out of the 193 wickets, 73 belong to Root. Only 116 wickets have been picked by the quick bowlers - Jofra Archer, Matt Fisher, Josh Tongue, Harry Brook and debutant Sonny Baker. These are the fewest for England's quicks since the 2007 Oval Test against India, where they had only 91 wickets.
65.79 - Percentage of Test runs in England's XI for Root: 13,952 out of 21,204. This is the highest for an England player in a men's Test since 1988, when Graham Gooch had 74.20% of England's runs (4337 out of 5845) going into the Oval Test against West Indies.
Root has 6700 Test runs more than the rest of England's XI. Only one player had a bigger such difference - Sachin Tendulkar, who played four Tests in 2013 along with XIs with a difference of 6800 and more.
1994 - The last instance of a player having more Test runs and also the most Test wickets than the rest of the players combined. That was Martin Crowe, when New Zealand faced England in Nottingham.
The above excludes Ireland's debut Test match in 2018, when Boyd Rankin had 13 Test runs and a Test wicket to his name from his solitary appearance for England.
1993 - The previous instance of England's playing XI for a men's Test featuring five players with no more than one Test cap - that was against Australia in Leeds.
England's XI for the Oval Test includes three debutants - James Rew, Jordan Cox and Baker - marking the first such instance since the 2017 Test against South Africa, also at The Oval.
47 - Men's Test matches for England between Root's last Test as captain in March 2022 against West Indies and this Test. Root was a part of England's XI in all these 47 matches as a player.
The gap of 47 Tests between captaincy stints is the second-longest for England. There was a gap of 57 Tests between Alec Stewart's second and third matches as captain, from March 1993 to June 1998. Stewart played in 49 of those 57 matches.
Across all teams, only two bigger gaps have been recorded: Australia played 74 matches between Bob Simpson's captaincy stints from 1966 to 1977, during which he only played one Test, while Pakistan played 70 Tests between Waqar Younis' captaincy stints from December 1993 to May 2001, with Waqar featuring in 47 of those matches.
5 - The number of changes made by England to their playing XI that competed in the first Test at Lord's. In the last 30 years, England have only made five (or more) changes for a men's Test within a series on two occasions: leading into the fifth Test match in Hobart during the 2021-22 Ashes, and for the fourth Test against New Zealand at The Oval in 1999.