File image of Steve Smith.© Getty
Steve Smith has joined Joe Root in the cricket record books. Smith took three catches in Bangladesh’s first innings in the first Test against Australia in Darwin, equalling Root for the most catches by a player in Test history. Both Smith and Root have now taken 218 catches each in Test cricket. Smith took catches to dismiss Litton Das, Mushfiqur Rahim and Najmul Hossain Shanto. The remarkable bit about Smith’s achievement is that he has taken 218 catches in just 124 Tests, compared to 166 Tests for Root.
Both Smith and Root are now eight catches ahead of Rahul Dravid, who is third on the list with 210 catches in Tests. Dravid earlier held top spot for a long while, before being overtaken by Root and Smith.
Smith has the chance to overtake Root in the ongoing Test, with Bangladesh’s second innings still to come.
However, the two are likely to keep going head-to-head for the world record for quite some time, with neither having announced their Test retirement.
If Smith does overtake Root, the Englishman will have the chance to retake the lead when England’s Test series against Pakistan begins on August 19.
Apart from Smith, Root and Dravid, only two others have taken more than 200 catches in Test history – Sri Lanka’s Mahela Jayawardene (205) and South Africa’s Jacques Kallis (200).
Besides Smith and Root, no currently active player has even 100 Test catches to their name. Sri Lanka Test captain Dhananjaya de Silva is closest, with 87 catches in 68 Tests. India’s KL Rahul is next up, with 76 catches in 69 Tests.
Smith, however, grabbed headlines for all the wrong reasons for his catching on Day 3 of the first Test against Bangladesh. Smith made a rare blunder at deep square-leg, dropping a fairly simple catch to dismiss Bangladesh tailender Taskin Ahmed.
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