James Anderson: Simply One of the Best

This article was originally published in Scoreline magazine.

A truly remarkable Test career ended on 12 July, the third and final day of the first Test between England and West Indies at Lord’s. The game had been embarrassingly one-sided as a contest; at close of play on the second day West Indies had four second innings wickets left and were still miles behind. Nonetheless a full house was present, no doubt partly because tickets had been bought in advance, but mainly to observe the final appearance on the international stage of the England fast bowler James Anderson, 42 years old at the end of July, who had made his England debut on the same ground in June 2003.

704 wickets in 188 Tests at an average of 26.45 is a truly remarkable record. Nasser Hussain lost no time in calling him England’s greatest ever bowler, a title bestowed upon Anderson some years ago by his then captain, Alastair Cook.

Around the same time, Geoffrey Boycott had put a message on ‘X”, picked up by Test Match Special, setting out his four greatest bowlers of all time; they were S F Barnes, Fred Trueman, Malcolm Marshall and Shane Warne.

Regular readers will not need to be reminded that Barnes and Trueman, together with Anderson, feature in my book, The Immortals of English Cricket.

It is difficult to argue with Boycott’s judgment. Everybody will have their own favourites in what is essentially a subjective exercise. Ray Lindwall, Dennis Lillee, Richard Hadlee, Curtly Ambrose, Glenn McGrath, Muttiah Muralitharan and Dale Steyn will all have their supporters. In a recent interview Brian Lara was asked which bowler he found most challenging to face. He had no hesitation: after honorary mentions of Warne and McGrath, he nominated Wasim Akram. Many would include his team-mate Waqar Younis also.

So there we have thirteen, plus Anderson. Barnes – 149 wickets at 16.43 in 27 matches  – was a freak and can be put to one side. There is no point comparing Anderson with Warne and Murali, so that leaves us with a top ten, plus Anderson. The question is whether Anderson fits in at the top table. The answer is a resounding Yes.

The question needs to be asked because quantity is distinguishable from quality, and longevity, though admirable in itself, and in Anderson’s case genuinely phenomenal, is not necessarily an indicator of effectiveness at the highest level. The Kent all-rounder Darren Stevens enjoyed remarkable success at county level till his mid-forties but would never have replicated that record in international cricket. And it should be noted that the highest career average among the top ten is Wasim’s, at 23.62.

The obvious comparison, because of their Englishness, is with Trueman. Both were leaders of attacks that went through periods of considerable contrast in terms of failure and success. Both were relatively injury-free. Trueman’s was a classically beautiful action, the perfect model for a fast bowler. Anderson’s was more quirky but its essential ease and repeatability was borne out by his longevity. Each was a match-winner in his own tight – Trueman’s high points tended to be more sensational than Anderson’s – and each benefitted from having a partner who was similar but just different enough – Brian Statham and Stuart Broad.

There the similarities end. But the differences are largely due to the fact that Trueman was playing in the 1950s and 1960s and Anderson was playing in the 21^st century.

As a centrally-contracted player and respected leader Anderson was more or less guaranteed a Test place as soon as he became established. Trueman was never in that position. He missed Len Hutton’s tour of Australia in 1954-55 because of disciplinary problems in the Caribbean in 1953-54. Even in his maturity he was dropped – not rested, rotated, overlooked but positively dropped – from home Ashes Tests in 1961 and 1964. That would never have happened to Anderson. In the 2023 Ashes, when he took five wickets at an average of 85, he was “rested” for the Headingley Test; the idea of dropping him was inconceivable.

Anderson of course had the opportunity, if that is the right word, to play much more Test cricket and  against a wider variety of opponents. But he played a total of only four Tests against Bangladesh and Zimbabwe, the two weakest countries; 147 of his 188 Tests were against Australia, India, New Zealand, Pakistan or South Africa. Trueman played 37 of his 67 Tests against Australia and West Indies. In nine Tests against India he averaged 14; the 1952 tourists found his pace exceptionally challenging.

Another big difference was that, relatively speaking, Anderson played relatively little first-class cricket other than Tests. He played 188 Tests and only 110 additional first-class matches; he took a total of 1126 first-class wickets. (Of course he played plenty of white-ball cricket though he effectively gave that up after the 2015 World Cup; it is often forgotten that he remains England’s leading ODI wicket-taker.) Trueman played in 67 Tests and no fewer than 603 first-class matches in total. He bowled just short of 100,000 deliveries in red-ball cricket, compared with Anderson’s 59,221. When Trueman became the first man to take 300 Test wickets, at The Oval in 1964, he was understandably knackered. He played his last Test the following year, when he was 34. Anderson was able to play Test cricket for so long at least partly because he didn’t have to play anything else. Trueman stopped playing for Yorkshire in 1968, finishing with 2304 wickets at 18.29 apiece.

Those figures are strikingly good by any standards. His Test numbers are equally impressive. Trueman took 307 Test wickets in 67 Tests at 21.57. He took five wickets in an innings on 17 occasions and ten wickets in a match on three. (Anderson’s figures for those last two elements are respectively 32 and three, which, given how many more games Anderson played, suggests Trueman was the more potent strike force.)

Anderson played his 67^th Test against Sri Lanka in Galle in March 2012 when he was 29. In that match he took his wicket total to 254, overtaking fellow Lancastrian Statham ( 252 wickets at 24.84 ). Anderson’s average then was 30.25.

But – nobody realised this at the time – he was only just starting. Unlike any fast bowler you can think of, Anderson got better as he got older. Of course it is normal for the tearaway to mature – Lillee and Hadlee are classic examples – but this was different.

In nine calendar years from 2014 to 2022, by which time he was forty, Anderson played 86 Tests, taking 335 wickets at 21.58. If you ignore 2019, when he suffered injury problems and took 12 wickets for 30 apiece, it was 323 wickets at 21.23. That is a better average than anyone in the top ten other than Ambrose and Marshall.

Numbers aren’t everything but Anderson’s are as good as anybody’s. What people will remember, though, is the consummate skill, especially in English conditions. When he started, all those years ago, he was seriously quick. By the end he was bowling in the late 70s, early 80s but there was no diminishing of his craft, one might say his art.

Could he have carried on? He certainly looked as if he could. In his only game for Lancashire in the 2024 County Championship he took the first six wickets in Nottinghamshire’s first innings and finished with seven for 35. In the Lord’s Test itself he looked as good as ever. Even on the tour of India he was as threatening as any other England pace bowler.

But England’s management had to be realistic. If they want the sort of success Australia and India enjoy, then they will have to rely on pace.

Would he have been better advised to bow out when Broad did, on a winning note at the end of a thrilling Ashes series? The Oval 2023 was very Broad. He hit his final ball in Test cricket for six and took the winning wicket with his last delivery .

But Lord’s in July 2024 was very Anderson. The Oval is all very well but you cannot match Lord’s for a special event, and Anderson was aware of that. On the first morning his family rang the five minute bell. The fact that the game itself – which England seemed destined to win from the moment Ben Stokes won the toss – lacked competitive significance somehow enhanced its status as a stage for people to be able to say goodbye, and thank you. England won the match by an innings; Anderson was stranded on nought not out without facing a ball. His last significant act on the field was to drop a catch off his own bowling: for twenty years he had been one of England’s best fielders. After the match , with a jubilant crowd gathered before the grand old Pavilion it was impossible not to feel the love.

The only question is how will England cope without him?