Root revels in 'pinch-yourself moment' after moving to No. 2

Joe Root described becoming the second-highest run-scorer in Test history as a "pinch-yourself moment" but would not be drawn into a discussion on his chances of hauling in Sachin Tendulkar's record. Root overtook Rahul Dravid, Jacques Kallis and Ricky Ponting in the all-time list during his 150 against India in Manchester and now sits 2512 runs behind Tendulkar's aggregate of 15,921.

Root has consistently played down the significance of the records that he has broken in recent years, including becoming England's all-time leading run-scorer in Multan last year. But he conceded that it was "pretty cool" to see his name near the top of a list featuring the batters that he tried to emulate as a boy.

"When you look at the names there on that list, they are all people that, as a kid growing up, that's who I would try to be in the garden, on the street, on the driveway, at my local club," Root told Sky Sports. "One day I'd try to be Ricky Ponting, the next I'd try to be Kumar Sangakkara or Brian Lara.

"I'd pretend that I was in different parts of the world, scoring Test-match hundreds. Even just to be mentioned in the same sentence as these guys is a bit of a pinch-yourself moment. It is pretty cool, yeah."

Root played against Tendulkar only once, on his Test debut in Nagpur in 2012, and is now closer to his record tally than any batter in history. "It's not something that I will focus on," he told the BBC. "Those sorts of things should look after themselves. The focus has to be about winning games.

"He made his Test debut before I was born. To be playing on the same ground as him and to get the chance to play against him was incredibly cool. [He was] someone you grew up watching, admiring, trying to learn from… To get to play in a series where he was still playing was really quite a memorable experience that I'll never forget."

Root only briefly acknowledged the standing ovation for the single that took him past Ponting on Friday and said he had tried to avoid focusing on his record. "I can't avoid it," he joked. "They [the numbers] are everywhere, aren't they? But you try to put it out of your mind. It is easy to get caught up in this stuff… You're not doing your job if you're concentrating on yourself."

He added: "It's something that I'll look back on at the end of my career rather than right now… It was a really cool day, something I'll try to take in properly and appreciate what I've achieved, but there's so much important cricket still to be playing within this series, within this game, and obviously in the next little while, so that's the main focus right now."

Root has reached new heights as a batter since the Covid-19 pandemic: in the last five years, he has averaged 55.33 and has scored 21 of his 38 centuries. He said that he had used the unexpected break to analyse his batting, and that he has approached the game "slightly differently" ever since.

"For the start of my career, a lot of [my approach] was based on my technique: where my hands are, where my head is, am I lined up, is my trigger right? Whereas in this second phase of things, it's been more about managing risk, and thinking, 'how can I eliminate as many modes of dismissal as possible, with the highest output?'

"It does come through experience; it comes from trial and error [and] from getting things wrong. You've got to see the game for what it is. It's very easy to get caught up, get too emotional, either get too hard on yourself or feel too sorry for yourself. You've got to see it for what it is, be very honest about it, and then just try to put that into practice."