Jimmy, Jimmy, Jimmy

A short paean to the master

I’m quite ignorant of the guiles of swing bowling. That, and the small matter of 700 Test match wickets separate me and James Anderson who, to the chagrin of the cricketing world, announced last week that he will be playing just one more Test match, the first of the upcoming English summer.

The quiet and rather blunt way in which Anderson announced his retirement is quite characteristic of how I’ve come to think of him as a cricketer. One of the game’s most lovably grumpy characters (perhaps only Jacques Kallis comes to mind in that particular category), it was rare to see the man crack an unfettered smile as he went about his business with minimal fuss and showmanship.

Multi-generational cricketers like Jimmy are likely to become rarer as the game progresses and tilts towards the riches of its shortest format. He’s just always been there, chipping away relentlessly at the best batters your national team could throw at him. Lethal at home – where Blighty often favoured him with dark skies and sinister breezes, aptly signalling the touring batters’ doom – and stubbornly holding down his end abroad, Anderson’s longevity as a paceman is going to be nothing short of puzzling for future generations.

Let’s spend a moment with his most remarkable stats. There is the small matter of 700 (and counting, at least for the moment) Test wickets – the most for a fast bowler, a milestone which lit up England’s otherwise dismal outing to India earlier this year. But the equally (if not more) impressive number is his 187 Test appearances, second only to Sachin Tendulkar (at 200), in a list whose top ten feature eight batters and only one other pure bowler: Anderson’s partner-in-crime, Stuart Broad (167). Anderson will end his career at 188 Test matches spanning 22 years. This record, together with his wickets tally, is likely to last for all time to come – and that is simply not a statement one is able to make about cricketing records in today’s world. 

Anyone who has who has held a cricket ball of any description and attempted to turn over their arm with some speed will understand how exacting it is on the body (just ask Mayank Yadav, or closer home, Jofra Archer); and if that someone is above the age of 30, the mere thought of doing it regularly for another decade is enough to confine them to the sickbed. But slim and lithe as ever, yet with a full head of hair (most recently sporting a blonde-streaked crest, a look few others could pull off at nearly 42) and a steely look about his eyes, Anderson looks like he could play forever.

One could argue that his mere presence in the side provides such comfort to viewers and team-mates alike and such a roundedness to the English attack, that he perhaps ought to play for as long as he is able. After all, as with any aging athlete, speculations about his retirement have been doing the rounds for a long time, but he has proved his fitness and capability (despite relatively diminishing returns with the ball) time and again. But Anderson has called time on his storied career with an understated grace that eludes most aging athletes - it certainly did for the only man with more Test appearances, whose retirement series was a barely disguised farce¹. Indeed, recently Jimmy had publicly acknowledged that his place in the side is by no means guaranteed, an attitude to his work that is rare for a player of his stature (and unheard of in the Indian subcontinent). It is consistent, then, for him to have put personal desires aside and chosen to step away in view of his team’s long-term goals and to allow understudies with dreams of coming into their own to replace him. For a man of few words, this act speaks volumes to his character, and can serve to infuse vigour and grit in the English team long after Jimmy’s last act.

I am remiss not to have waxed lyrical about his many memorable spells of masterful seam and swing bowling that have stumped (pun intended) batters both double and half his age. To tell you the truth, no spell immediately comes to mind. The thing with James Anderson is, he’s always hiding in plain sight: his artistry a given without becoming commonplace; his compact run-up and delivery easy on the eye but attesting to years of painstaking effort at perfection; his sullen presence on the ground a reminder of the kind of timeless class that future cricketers can only hope to emulate. We are speaking of a bowler who has bowled alongside (and at) such doyens as Glenn McGrath, Dale Steyn (amongst his colleagues), and Muttiah Muralitharan and Shane Warne; and yet emerged as greater than many if not most of them in terms of being the ustad of his particular craft – and certainly the greatest in terms of sheer endurance. Such is his skill that Anderson’s mastery of swing bowling has become a universal truth which need no longer be dissected or explained.  

I will close this piece, then, with an anecdote in tribute to that other skill of his – grossly underrated, I am sure, in his view; after all, you don’t become one of the greatest ever bowlers without being firmly of the belief that you’re also a great batter  – which has brought delight to the English on a few occasions, but unwittingly far more and on many more occasions to his opponents.

In an intra-school quiz in the eleventh grade, I, along with a close friend, faced a question on which batter (full name required to win the point) held a certain then-current record – if memory serves me right, it had to do with either most not outs, or most innings before a first duck in Tests. The adjacent team gave what I thought was the correct answer, but was declined by the quizmaster; when handed the mic, I smirked at them and gave out the same answer, cocksure that the other team had been penalized only for their ignorance of the batter’s full name: Abraham Benjamin de Villiers. The quizmaster shot me a pitiful look and beamed the answer on the screen: a particularly disgruntled James Michael Anderson² in the batting gear that always made him look slighter than with ball in hand – the face much too small in its helmet casing and the body swallowed up by the batting paraphernalia donned dutifully on. I daresay that Anderson’s finest effort with the bat was that last stand with Monty the almost-politician at Cardiff in 2009, a match-saving and series-winning partnership in which Jimmy stoutly contributed 21(53)*, staving off the increasingly desperate Australians in a tense final hour. It was cricket theatre at its best, and I’m glad to have witnessed it live.

Jimmy has, however, deigned to provide us many more picture-perfect moments with the bat: not with gritty knocks, but with his own memorable dismissals. A classic number 11, he has trudged out the last man more times than one can remember, grumpier than usual at his more talented compatriots for having failed to do their jobs, and proceeded to miss, nick, or hit out to bestow upon several oppositions their favourite cricketing memories. I’ll let the Aussies and others fend for themselves; as an Indian, you only have to think of Lord’s or The Oval (both 2021); as a Kiwi, that dramatic, historic win snatched at Wellington last year.

Thank you for the memories, Jimmy, and all the best for your last outing in the whites – we will be watching in the knowledge that there will never be another quite like you.

1. See: Sightings of Sachin in Ramachandra Guha, The Commonwealth of Cricket (Fourth Estate, 2020), pp. 190-191.

2. I would so love to remember the exact question (my quiz-mate does not either), because as I’m checking the stats today, there is no Test batting record where de Villiers and Anderson are so closely placed as to cause two teams to give the same wrong answer. The closest is most innings before first duck, but even there, de Villiers (the record-holder) and Anderson are separated by 24 ducks and 3 players. In the record held by Anderson (most not outs), de Villiers does not feature in the list at all.