by sussexpob » Tue Jun 07, 2016 1:40 pm
The first time I heard of Jimmy Anderson was reading about him in a small side article in the Guardian in the summer of 2002. The words came from Duncan Fletcher, then England Head Coach, who had taken time out to cherish the talent he had witnessed while taking a trip to Old Trafford in between tests. Fletcher used terms like “pace”, “90mph plus” and “reverse swing” while palpably drooling. He foretold a star being born, one he was keen to elevate as soon as possible to the national team.
I have no doubt read many a similar article about other cricketers, ones that never stuck in the memory. The dreary days of my cricket upbringing through the dark pre-Fletcher times were spend wasting hope on similar players of the same era. By the time 1999 had come along and a clearly inept Aftab Habib was making Daniel Vettori look like the spinner equivalent of the Don, much hope had been lost. A new coach and a new set of players may have temporarily aroused interest, yet anyone with the misfortune to wake up on that cold November morning in 1999 and watch the capitulation of England in the first test in South Africa would have justified reasons for believing what they were witnessing was not the start of a cricketing revolution. By the time my county hero Chris Adams had flayed an edge to an eager Mark Boucher, ending his rather torturous stay at the crease which did a lot to confirm he was way out of his depth, England were 30-5. I believe this was the only time in my life I was ever happy to the leave the house in the morning to attend a lecture.
Yet there was something that sticks in the memory about this article to revived some form of excitement and hope. I will never be able to say why, especially when the opinion came from a man who had only months before tried to convince me that Uzman Afzaal was the answer to all of England’s batting problems (Afzaal can claim only one use in a cricketing context; he provided excellent catching practice for the Australian slip cordon), nevertheless I found myself clearing my late summer schedule for the Lancs v Sussex game at the end of the season eager to see this Anderson in action.
Little sticks in the memory of that game, other than Anderson bowled one huge wide, and the fact he was hardly given the ball after spraying it around badly on first change. He hardly looked a threat on a pitch where the other Lancs new ball bowlers made inroads, and rarely looked like he had any control. I was surprised when Anderson was picked for the Australia tri-series tour that winter based on what I had seen. He seemed a long way from a finished article.
By 2003 Anderson was in the test team, after an impressive ODI start. It began with a dream start at Lords with 5 wickets in the first innings, and followed by cheap wickets at CLS against Zimbabwe. It didn’t seem to matter that Zimbabwe’s world cup on-field protest and the Mugabe take over had cost them all their best players, or that conditions were perfect in that early summer for swing bowling..... the prophecy was coming true.
As the cool early summer gave way to one of the hottest ever recorded in decades(I remember leaving a match at Hove in the early afternoon that year to hide inside, the temperature was near 40 degrees!), Anderson would find South Africa a much tougher proposition. Aside from a Nottingham pitch that dried out in the blazing heatwave and resembled something more akin to what you would find in Lahore, where Anderson later in the innings commanded some control to go with his ability to reverse the ball, there was little on display from Anderson to convince of his abilty. He was always a yard too full looking for the swing, always trying to steam into the crease and throw his weight behind every ball. It was quick, it was “90 mph plus” at times, and he could reverse it; but the Saffer batsman were never far away from the free offer of a boundary, and never really put under much prolonged pressure. Wickets came as "oasis" balls in desert like spells of bad lengths, and poor lines. Anderson was capable of delivering you something unplayable, but only after you scored 70.
It was this lack of control that came to signify Anderson’s 5 day bowling. He wanted to bowl wicket taking balls, but had no appreciation of the art and science of his craft. Between 2004 and 2006, when he played he went for over 4 an over, unable to contain a batsman or apply pressure. After his poor 2006/07 Ashes (which he wasn’t 100% fit for in fairness) and an absolute massacring in back to back tests against India and Sri Lanka in 2007 (he conceded 182 in the first innings of the Oval test, and went at nearly a run a ball for 128 runs in the SL away test), it seemed it was over. Anderson hadn’t changed. He wanted to bowl quick and nasty, but only succeeded in getting battered.
His stats will say that his career turned around in 2008, but I still think he was the same type of bowler then just getting more fortune. That NZ 7-for at Nottingham was noticeable for how vicious he was trying to bowl, the example being Flynn being knocked out after a barrage of pace. He was still looking for magic balls, and was pulling them off on a green deck and terribly weak batting line up. For me the first noticeable change in Anderson was in 2009 at CLS vs the Windies.
He was almost suddenly more controlled, noticeably slower. His jerky and hurried action had smoothed, if not perfectly, but he seemed to be able to put the ball where he wanted. When Chris Gayle left one that scraped the bail on the way through, the next ball was a couple of inches inside the stump line, and he went lbw. He had batsman committing to play the inswinger, then sent down the outwsinger. He got everything out of the pitch he could. He took advantage of batsman mistakes by getting the ball on target, by continually requiring something from them. His career changed after that match, maybe not immediately, but it wouldn’t take long. He had matured into a fine test match bowler.
For all those original touted attributes, Anderson only became an asset to England when he stopped trying to bowl fast and rely on swing. He became more successful when he appreciated the basics; line and length, bowling to setup a batsman, able to make the best of conditions by making sure the swing/seam you can generate at least makes a difference. There is no point bowling 97mph heavy swinging balls if they drift past a batter stumps and go for 4 wides.
It continually surprises me that cricket commentators or fans alike chase this fallacy of the “big bowling attributes” that need to be present in a successful fast bowler. Mike Atherton once stated a fast bowler can only thrive in test cricket if they have at least two of the required three skills; pace, pronounced movement and accuracy. Yet this would ignore a whole host of slower bowlers that have been successful. Accuracy has always been for me the only attribute you need to be a test player. If it comes with some mental guile then all the better, at this point you are probably a true world beater.
Nothing can represent this more than Anderson. He is able to eek out everything in a pitch, in the weakness of the batsman, because he knows how to work over a batters technique and mentality. He is able to now get batsman to come across their stumps with outswing, and then drift it into the planted leg. He is able to make batsman play with the inswing, and the knick off with the one that goes the other way. Sri Lanka are no great team, but more than a few great teams would have been blow away with his barrage in the first test, in those conditions. Another key example that always sticks out to me was McGrath at Lords in 2005, not statistically his best bowling, but he just kept all the batsman playing and wondering where they can score, and the small amount of indifferent bounce, swing or seam he was able to generate, in no way exceptionally pronounced, did the rest. The overworn cliche of "buying a ticket" you hear from the least creative of football commentators seems apt... if its not hitting wood or a leg, you arent getting a player out, so make a batsman play defending his stumps.
Anderson’s best attribute for English cricket moving on to the future years could be his legacy in judging the suitability of players solely based on physical attributes that seem to stand out over less appealing, less pronounced, but ultimately equally if not more important that others. It pains me when someone would comment on Rushworth being “too slow” for test cricket when the greatest exponent of the art in the 21st century bowled at 80mph and never reverse swinged the ball. We seem to want highlight reel players over clever, cunning, intellectual thinkers.
When people bemoan the lost art of pace bowling, they often forget that it was those attributes that made the greats. Sure, Michael Holding or Wasim Akram could knock your head off, but they could also work out a batsman or contain them. A true “enforcer” is someone who wins matches, not someone who breaks up the middle of the pitch pointlessly tiring themselves out trying to bowl quick. Yet when we talk of these greats, we talk of the pace or the bouncer that knocked someone over, not of the repetitive monotony of giving the batsman nothing to score off. We remember Mitchell Johnson trying to knock out teeth, but not Asif drifting in and knocking out your off stump.
You get the feeling with Anderson, had someone encouraged him to develop his skills a few years earlier rather than aimlessly waste them trying to be something he wasn’t, we might be talking about one of the great quicks of cricket history. Certainly a player of his calibre just starting his career would be challenging for it. I am left to feel though that Anderson’s success serves more to represent the waste of talent that England have let slip by over my decades of watching test cricket.
A bowler, regardless of their type is only as good as their performance. Great test match bowling never died, it just became confused for something else.
2010 French Open fantasy league guru 2010 Wimbledon fantasy league guru 2014 Masters golf fantasy guru 2015 Players Championship FL Guru 2016 Masters Golf Fantasy Guru
And a hat and bra to you too, my good sirs!