Forget the extraordinary achievements – the reason we’re going to miss James Anderson is that, as a man, he’s so ordinary. Yes, he’s played more Tests for England than anyone else (188), and taken more wickets (701 and counting, at least for another day or two). Indeed his haul is easily the best by any fast bowler in the world – only the spinners Muttiah Muralitharan and Shane Warne did better, Warne by a very slim margin.
Goodbye then, Jimmy, you routine superstar, you everyday hero
Anderson has bowled more Test maidens than Phillip de Freitas bowled Test overs. (This is a tribute to the former rather than a dig at the latter, who played 44 times for his country.) Shoaib Bashir, one of his teammates in this final match, wasn’t even born when Anderson played his first. Perhaps the loveliest way to get your head round his longevity is to reflect on the fact that he has played Test cricket under more prime ministers than any other Englishman. Wilfred Rhodes’s career also spanned eight PMs, but he didn’t actually take to the field under one of them (Bonar Law).
But as I say, never mind the numbers, relish the man. Anderson is so beloved by fans because he’s exactly like them. Sporting heroes tend to be charismatic, unusual, coated in a movie-star sheen. But Jimmy is Jimmy rather than James, not just because it fits the chant (to the tune of Son of My Father), but because it sums him up. He hates the limelight, he keeps his head down, he does his job. It’s a job he does very well, but it doesn’t define him. He will not, he says, be copying Alastair Cook and having old stumps built into his staircase at home.
His style on the field is beautifully mundane. The bowling action is unflashy, the deliveries are below top speed – instead his deadliness comes from unerring accuracy and subtlety of movement. Like the best drummers, Anderson makes something that is very hard to do look incredibly easy. Between overs he trudges off to the deep to do his fielding, looking for all the world like a village cricketer wishing the match was over so he can get home for dinner.
And when he goes out to bat, especially against quick bowlers, he displays the same hangdog reluctance that that same village cricketer feels when he’s forced to face the opposition’s demon 18 year-old. Twitching, flinching, just one nasty bouncer away from deliberately treading on his own stumps so he can retreat to the safety of the pavilion.
He is, you have to admit, astonishingly handsome – but even here, he has the grace to be normal. His looks (even as he approaches 42) are those of a healthy young butcher’s lad about to set off on his bicycle to do the delivery round, rather than the lead singer of a rock band. You just know that it wouldn’t even occur to him to try anything on with your girlfriend. (Your girlfriend might have other ideas.)
And, most joyful of all, he sometimes takes full advantage of his inalienable right, as a long-serving fast bowler, to be a grumpy old bastard. Graeme Swann tells the story of fielding in the slips with Alastair Cook, who suddenly had an idea about something different Anderson could try to the batsman who was currently defeating their plans.
‘That’s great,’ said Swann, ‘go and tell him.’ Cook was, after all, captain of the side. ‘No,’ said a fearful Cook, ‘you go and do it.’ So Swann ran over to Anderson, who was trudging back to the the beginning of his run-up. He relayed Cook’s idea. ‘How many wickets,’ replied Anderson in his uncompromising Burnley accent, ‘has he taken for England?’ There were, adds Swann, some other words in there as well.
So farewell then, Jimmy, you routine superstar, you everyday hero, the man we’d all be if fate had gifted us the role of best bowler in the entire history of English cricket. Never change, will you? Don’t become flash in your retirement, don’t start doing daytime TV or become a ‘character’. Stick to the attitude you showed in India last winter, when you and the other England players were given the chance to meet the Dalai Lama. Some of them went, but you made the decision that left your kids, in your words, ‘fuming’. As you explained later: ‘I’m not particularly spiritual. It was a morning when we had afternoon practice. I fancied a lie-in.’
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