Joe Root has said he will "terribly miss" playing with James Anderson following the legendary seamer's retirement from Test cricket.
James Anderson bowed out of international cricket at Lord's last week, playing his final game in the first of England's three-match series against the West Indies. He finishes his 21-year-long career having played 188 Test matches and taken 704 wickets, both world records by some distance among fast bowlers. He took four wickets in his final outing, including three in the West Indies' second innings.
Speaking the day after the game, Joe Root, Anderson's former captain, said: "For me, all I've ever known for England is playing alongside Jimmy and that's been for 12 years. It's a bit of a weird one, seeing Stuart [Broad] go last year and [now] Jimmy. I'll terribly miss playing alongside him, but the fact that he'll be around for the summer will be great for the young bowlers coming through and for us to keep using that experience and everything else he has to offer the dressing room.
"I'm really pleased that he's been able to have the send-off that he deserves but also, it's in some ways, a little bit sad to see him go."
Root has played 110 out of his 141 Test matches alongside Anderson, captaining in 46 of those. Under Root's captaincy, Anderson and Broad were both famously dropped from the side after their loss in the 2021/22 Ashes series, but were subsequently recalled under Ben Stokes' captaincy.
Speaking on whether he planned to follow the two legendary fast bowlers into retirement, Root said: "Not at the minute. I'd like to think I'll be playing for a good while yet. And when that day comes, I'm sure I'll figure something out.
"You've got to earn the right to have that sort of fairytale ending, like the likes of Jimmy, Stuart, Cookie [Alastair Cook, at the Oval in 2018] have had. My focus purely is on scoring as many runs for this team as I can and helping us win as many games as we can. "Until that focus changes and until that drive changes, then I'll continue to solely focus on that and we'll worry about that hopefully a long way down the road."
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