Root breaks record for most Test catches

Joe Root has added another record to his glittering career.

In claiming a sensational one-hander on the second evening of the third Test against India at Lord’s, Root took his 211th catch in Test cricket, passing the 210 of Rahul Dravid to go out on his own with the most grabs by a fielder.

Even for a prolific run-scorer like Root, much more of his time in an England shirt has been spent in the field, rather than in the middle. When he is fielding, Root is usually in the action alley of first slip, the eye of the storm.

The desire to be in the firing line was born 25 years ago at Sheffield Collegiate Cricket Club, where Root was given an unusual incentive to stay alive to the game.

“At eight or nine years old, I’d be doing fine leg to fine leg, working my apprenticeship that way,” Root tells BBC Sport. “As you play a little bit more, you start finding ways of trying to get more involved.

“To get us staying engaged with the game, one of the senior players would keep asking how many balls were left. If we got it right, we’d get 20p. At the end of the game, if you were engaged and knew what was going on, you might be able to buy yourself a packet of crisps and a pop. That’s how I got into it.

Root’s first catch came in his fourth Test, holding New Zealand’s Peter Fulton off the bowling of Steven Finn at long-on in 2013. The record-breaking catch came in Root’s 156th Test, 12 years later.

From all of them, Root has a couple of favourites. One was a lunge to hold a parry off James Vince and dismiss Sri Lanka’s Shaminda Eranga at Chester-le-Street in 2016. The other was a full-stretch dive at short cover to hold Indian Ajinkya Rahane in Chennai in 2021, a game in which Root also made a double hundred and probably his best win as England captain.

In an Ashes year, there is an Anglo-Australian subplot, a further layer of competition between premier batters Root and Steve Smith.

For either man, or any of the other top catchers in the world, the common denominator is practise.

But taking catch after catch in training is barely half of the story. The easy bit of the drill is knowing the catch is coming. In a Test, it can be hours or days. Standing, crouching and waiting, hoping for the edge and having the concentration to be ready when it comes.

“That’s the beauty of it,” says Root. “You’re training your body, over and over again, that when the ball comes, you’re in the right position, lined up nicely, and staying nice and relaxed.

“It might be two days before you take a catch, but if it’s drilled into you, time and time again, it makes it that little bit easier. It takes that panic out of it.

“There are situations where the conditions are in the bowlers’ favour and you feel very much in the game the whole time. You are naturally in a very good headspace to catch. There are other times when it comes out of nowhere, catching you off guard.”

For the best catchers, being positioned in the busiest areas means the most chances. While that means most success, it also raises the likelihood of an occupational hazard: a drop.

“There are times when you want the floor to swallow you up, to disappear,” says Root. “The only way that you are going to feel remotely better is getting another opportunity, trying to put it right.

“You’ve got to want the ball, that next chance to come to you and be confident in yourself you’re not going to make the same mistake twice.”

Tracking drops is difficult, not least because it is hard to quantify what counts as a chance. One man’s dolly is another man’s screamer. According to CricViz, the 12 chances Root missed off Stuart Broad was more than he put down off any other bowler.

On the flip side, it was Broad’s famous 8-15 against Australia at Trent Bridge in 2015 that had Root feeling like he could catch everything. Three of Broad’s haul came thanks to Root’s mitts.

“I felt like the ball was coming all the time,” says Root. “I was very confident. I’d caught a few before that game. It was one of those feelings where I was thinking, ‘Right, come on, any opportunity I’m clinging on to it’.”

Root was in the same team as Broad on 114 occasions and with James Anderson 110. However, neither of England’s two Goats are at the top of Root’s list of favourite bowlers to be at slip to.

“When conditions suit it swinging around, Ben Stokes has got this incredible knack of nicking people off,” says Root.

“There have been two occasions in the past couple of years where he’s bowled a no- ball, then the next ball has been an edge, and I’ve dropped it.

Root owns any number of England batting records and may end up as the leading run scorer in Test history.

For now there is the satisfaction of taking more catches than any other man: the highest level, elite bowlers, the grandest venues and in all conditions across the world.

Even for the very best, there are still similarities to those who have tried to play in clubs, schools or parks. For anyone who has found themselves in the slips, there is the question of passing time as the game drifts on.

“None of us have particularly good chat,” says Root of the England cordon. “Zak Crawley is probably the most interesting, because he’ll want to argue about something. He’ll create a debate he doesn’t even believe in just to stimulate a conversation.

“We might start naming the top five footballers in the world, favourite musicians, to where we’re going for dinner that night.