There’s a lot going on this week, if you like sport. Wimbledon and the Euros in full flow, a rugby Test in New Zealand. And Jimmy Anderson bowing out. His like won’t come again, believe me. A great medium-fast swing and seam bowler still at the top of his game aged 41? Playing his 188th Test? Don’t be silly.
At some point, Anderson will stand at the end of his mark, lean gently forwards and push off into his run-up for the 39,878th time in Test cricket. His action now is honed and taut, but not that much different to when he started, having returned to what felt natural and instinctive after an early back injury caused by tinkering. His features have sharpened and his hair is groomed, not groovy.
There’s a lot that has changed since his debut 21 years ago, not least seven prime ministers, who have shuffled in and out of office. In this period, Anderson has covered more than 500 miles in his run-up alone. He will finish as the second or third-highest Test wicket-taker of all time and, surely, as England’s finest ever swing and seam bowler.
I’ve watched all but five of Anderson’s 187 Tests live. The ones missed were all Covid-related: Galle, Chennai, Ahmedabad (twice) in the winter of 2020-21 when travel was impossible, and New Zealand at Edgbaston in the summer of 2021 when I was Covid-infected. That means I’ve reported or commentated on him taking 685 Test wickets. What fun. What a privilege.
He has been, unquestionably, the best England cricketer of my era, and the one I’ve enjoyed watching, commentating and reporting on the most. Part of that is a natural affinity with Lancashire, our club. He’s a Burnley boy. Living in affluent Cheshire now, he’s come a long way from Thursday nights in Panama Joe’s, 10p a pint and change left over from a tenner after a night on the tiles, but he hasn’t forgotten his roots.
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The highest wicket-taking fast bowler of all time. Who’d a thought it? Certainly not those in Burnley’s third team, when they played at Acre Bottom in Ramsbottom on April 13, 1996. In an early appearance for the club, Anderson was leg-before without scoring and did not bowl. He was just 13 at the time and, in his own words, “bang average”.
Yet there are always some clues. A competitive streak was always manifest, according to those who knew him best. In his book, Bowl, Sleep, Repeat, Anderson likened his father, Michael, to the ultra-competitive dad in The Fast Show, never letting him win at anything, even board games. Anderson came to an accommodation with losing (essential in sport) but knew when he finally won, he’d done so on merit.
He’s won a lot, has Jimmy, but lost a lot, too. Sixty-eight Tests. Two Ashes whitewashes. Often there at the end, last man out, shaking hands, trudging off. What do I admire the most about him? He kept going, kept turning up, good days and bad. Never shirked. “Genius is in the act of showing up,” is the last line in his book. Tired, battered, bruised, beaten and brilliant, he kept showing up.
A word for the parents, by the way. You see all types following England cricketers through thick and thin. It’s not easy for them. Anderson’s are supportive but unobtrusive — which is ideal. They are often there but you rarely see them. When their boy went past Ian Botham’s mark in Antigua in 2015 (how trifling does 383 wickets sound now, by the way?) they were noticeable, and in Dharamshala last winter when he took No700. They’ve kept their distance, mainly.
In his mid-teenage years, he grew a foot and put on a yard. By 16, he was opening the bowling for Lancashire’s second XI alongside Mike Watkinson, who would come to have a considerable influence. Watkinson, a former Lancashire captain, showed him the basics and the mechanics of swing, as well as the feel of it. Most people can look back on a key, early influence.
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A couple of years after that, he became a professional at Lancashire, which is when I came across him for the first time in the nets. I don’t remember much (it was my last year as a player): he was sharp and very unpredictable. Potential record-breaker? No way. “One player in a million,” he has said, “can turn up and turn it on; the rest need to put in a lot of work.” Anderson put in a lot of work.
After his England breakthrough, those early years were often unremarkable. In and out of the team; injury; remodelled action; performances up and down; more up than down, but still. “We’ve got one here,” I remember Nasser Hussain, his first England captain, saying. “Some bowlers just have a knack of taking wickets,” Geoff Boycott said to me. But 700 wickets? At this stage, you’d have been mad to suggest so.
Then it clicked. Aged 27 or 28, maybe. Body and mind mature; technique ingrained; skills acquired; old guard out of the way; steady captain (Andrew Strauss); regular new-ball partner (Stuart Broad); top-notch spinner (Graeme Swann) to take some pressure off; good batsmen to allow some rest. And confidence. Since then, it has been an absolute pleasure.
There are so many memorable wickets, with batsmen deceived and looking silly — Kraigg Brathwaite with a delicious inswinger in Grenada 2015, anyone? — but it’s not the clips I’ll remember. Anderson is not to be appreciated through clips but over time; over the course of a spell, a day, a Test or a series. When it’s flat and you have to winkle one out, before pouncing with the second new ball.
Some of his best performances have been less obvious. The stinking heat of Sharjah in 2015, for example, when his first-innings figures against Pakistan read: 15.1-7-17-4. He gave nothing away, and fiddled four out. He bowled brilliantly in Brisbane in 2010 (37-13-99-2) for some unremarkable figures. They don’t always tell the true story. Aged 40, in Melbourne, he took four for 33, as the tour fell apart. Remarkable.
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After these days of graft, relish the glory. There have been plenty of occasions when he’s stood in the middle, sniffed the air, almost touched the clouds, and hooped it this way and that at will, causing chaos. Lord’s 2017: seven for 42 versus West Indies. Nottingham 2008: seven for 43 versus New Zealand, Brendon McCullum — now his England head coach — turned around, off stump out of the ground.
Fast bowling is hard, painful work, but he’s enjoyed the second half of his career so much, after the realisation that he could be good every day, not just occasionally. “People talk about the ball being on a string. Sometimes there are these amazing passages when everything feels so synchronised, all the years of practice have been built up in you so that it’s as if it is happening despite yourself,” he revealed in his autobiography.
“You hear songwriters talk about writing a song in ten minutes, but having had to carve away at the art for ten years in order to give themselves that moment. There have been moments in the middle of a spell where it’s almost blissed out, showing off a little bit, just performing the whole time.” Like Eric Clapton on his favourite Fender.
Anderson has got better as he has aged. In the last decade of his career, after the age when many fast bowlers have hung up their boots, he has taken 345 Test wickets at an average of 23. He has just about made peace with the selectors’ decision to move on after this Test, but you sense he feels he could go on. When you love doing something, it’s harder to let go.
He’s mellowed a bit along the way, although the shyness has never really left him. You might get a “good morning” out of him now during a game. I don’t know him well, though. Shared the odd meal and glass of wine (he likes his red) together. What’s he like, people ask? Normal, I reply. Utterly normal. Plays a mean game of golf as well. Right-handed. He’s been batting the wrong way all these years.
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He’s also gentler than you might think from his bowling persona. Off the field, he’s James, not Jimmy, and is moved to tears more easily than most. I had to cut short an interview once at Headingley after a defeat against Sri Lanka in 2014. More tears came when Alastair Cook retired. More than once he has gone teary on stage when reading out some words from the late Bob Willis. There will be some tears this week, guaranteed.
He is among the last of his kind. When he started, T20 didn’t exist, nor did the Indian Premier League. He is a cricketer of a certain time and type. He’s only ever played for one club and his country. He loves Test cricket, all the graft and grind, and the lessons learnt. There won’t be many, if any, like this to follow.
What an example he has set: always curious; always learning; always improving, age just a number. Now here we are. He geared up for his farewell Test, engine oiled and purring, with a seven-wicket haul against Nottinghamshire at Southport that was as good as anything he has produced for Lancashire, hitting the crease and the pitch hard, accurate and incisive as ever.
Perfect endings in sport are rare. Broad delivered one last summer, with a wicket and a six off the final ball bowled and hit, and a victory over Australia at the Oval.
Anderson cannot match that, but going past Shane Warne — he needs nine more wickets to do that — leaving only Muttiah Muralitharan ahead of him, would be his equivalent. What a cricketer. Catch him while you can.
