The 39-year-old bowler is steadily getting better despite the battle scars with the team going in the opposite direction
Jimmy Anderson walked into the indoor nets at the Melbourne Cricket Ground and slumped into the first available chair. His eyes were weary. His boots were scuffed. His trousers were soaked in blood, a fielding injury from Adelaide two Tests earlier which had never been allowed to heal. The fourth Ashes Test of 2017-18 had just ended in an excruciating draw, Anderson had just bowled 59 thankless overs and only a lunatic would have entertained the notion that he would be back at this very ground in four years’ time for more of the same.
A lunatic such as Jimmy Anderson, in other words. For in the last week of 2021, here he was: a fresh set of whites, a fresh set of stumps, a fresh set of edges, a fresh haul of victims. And even if England’s latest batting collapse extinguished any faint hope that his four for 33 might prove an Ashes-saving effort, then in many ways this is to capture the very essence of late-career Anderson: a bowler steadily getting better and better, even as his team gets worse and worse.
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