Where other bowlers have seen careers ruined by injury, mutterings about girth, depression and homesickness, Anderson is still going strong in his 162nd Test“What’s the secret?” Nasser Hussain asked Jimmy Anderson before the start of this Test. “A lot of it is luck,” Anderson told him. “I’ve been born with a body that can cope with the pressures of bowling.” The rest, he said, was “hunger”, the appetite to work at getting better every day for the past 6,596 days, since he made his Test debut in May 2003. In that time he’s played 162 games, which puts him top of the list, one ahead of his great mate Alastair Cook. Luck and hunger. It’s a short reply to a...
The 2013-14 series left genuine scars in the England team, but there is still a chapter to play out against AustraliaIt seemed too easy at the time. Three weeks ago, Australia’s cricketers lost a Test for the first time in 33 years at the Gabba – deepest, dankest dungeon of the Australian sporting soul, and a kind of mental disintegration portal for meeker, less thrillingly chosen races. So yeah, they got beaten there by India’s B team. But at the end Justin Langer was out in the celebrations looking humble and magnanimous and weirdly invulnerable – all the while wearing that familiar alpha dog, kungfu, zen master smile, the look of a man who, to quote John Updike, has just...
England’s record wicket-taker shines on return in place of Stuart Broad but there is an argument Joe Root’s attack would be more effective with the pair bowling in tandemJimmy Anderson, bloody hell. Six for 40, in fierce heat, while everyone else managed four for 339. His best haul in Asia, 17 years after he first played there. The first five-for recorded in an Asian Test by a 38-year-old seamer. I could go on, but it is only 24 hours since this space was last devoted to Anderson’s excellence.Happily, there is another angle here that is just as interesting: the ramifications of rotation. On England’s Sri Lanka tour, Anderson and Stuart Broad are sharing a place in the starting XI. It...
England veteran showed undimmed resolve in his 157th Test to wring out three cheap wickets in tough bowling conditions Here he comes again then, running in from the Fort End, a flat and disobliging pitch underneath, and a new ball to work with. This is Jimmy Anderson’s 19th year in Test cricket, and his 157th Test, not that any of that seems to make much difference. As his teammate Mark Wood said at the end of the day, Anderson seems to be bowling just as well as ever. This is his fifth tour of Sri LankaHe came here when he was a kid in 2003, for his first Test overseas, and got carted around the SSC, again in 2007, a...
Having tilted the second Test back in England’s favour, the paceman tore into West Indies’ top order on the final dayIt might be that by the time the expedition made it back to St Louis, Clark had got to wondering why Lewis’s name always came first. After 10 movies, Rogers definitely felt a little resentment towards Astaire. And when Martin and Lewis broke up their partnership after 10 years they didn’t speak to each other again for another 20. It’s not always easy being yoked so close, so long. But it has its benefits, particularly in cricket. Ask Hall and Griffith, Lillee and Thomson, Waqar and Wasim, Ambrose and Walsh, McGrath and Gillespie, or, of course, Anderson and Broad, best...