James Anderson knows from 40,037 (legal) deliveries to be grateful for anything you can get in this game
Andrew Miller12-Jul-2024It all ended with a stooped-shouldered apology. Ben Duckett, feet planted inside the Grandstand boundary, settled beneath a top-edged pull off Jayden Seales with a diffidence that you might not ordinarily expect at the winning moment of a Test match. Gus Atkinson, standing at the end of his follow-through, bowed his head in supplication, even as he completed a debut match haul of 12 for 106, the fourth-best in Test history, and the best by an Englishman for 134 years.It was James Anderson who broke the awkwardness, rushing up to Atkinson to embrace the man who, for this Test at least (if not necessarily for the next 187 to come) has proven himself worthy of leading England’s changed guard.”Gus apologised for taking that last wicket,” Ben Stokes, England’s captain, told the media afterwards, before pausing on the punchline to check the TV cameras weren’t taking his comments live. “Jimmy told him to eff off!”As well he might. Anderson knows from a career spanning 40,037 (legal) deliveries that you should be grateful for anything you can get in this game, that the sensation of success – even if you’re able to feel it on an extraordinary 704 occasions – is still fleeting in the grand scheme of a sportsman’s career. And besides, he’d had his chance to write his own script three overs earlier, when he spilled one of the easiest return catches that can ever have been poked back to him.Anderson’s eyes had widened and his sinews stiffened as Gudakesh Motie stabbed at an inswinger, in his fourth over of the morning, that looped back towards his outstretched left hand. But he simply couldn’t close out the deal. Perhaps, as with the gentle shove towards the exit that he had required in that Manchester hotel-room back in April, Anderson was still not quite ready to go out on his own terms.Related
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Who truly was ready for that moment? Even allowing for the prospect of a full refund for such a swift end on this third day, you got the sense that a packed Lord’s crowd would have watched this final spell for all eternity. His captain was certainly ready to oblige them.”I didn’t tell Jimmy, but I said he was always going to bowl until we took that last wicket,” Stokes said. “However long it took, I wasn’t going to take him off. Even if he said he was tired, I was like, ‘you gotta keep going here’.”And keep going he did, even after the felicitations had been completed and the pints of “recovery shake” Guinness had been downed, as he returned to his favoured Pavilion End long after the close of play to bowl at his daughters and other team-mates’ kids in an outfield knockabout. If he was visibly at peace on this emotional day of farewells, it may be that he’s not yet processed quite what a void he is leaving in this sport.If the choreography of Anderson’s exit paled in comparison to that of Stuart Broad’s at The Oval last summer, then at least the highlights reel will recall his final wicket, No.704, as a true collector’s item; a disassembling of Joshua da Silva that will hold its own in perpetuity.The angle, the length, the subtlety of his outswing – extravagant on the one hand, as it curled from leg to off to kiss the edge of da Silva’s closed-faced bat, yet economised on the other, in keeping with so much else about Anderson’s channelled, streamlined and seemingly eternal pomp.Half a bat’s width, as Glenn McGrath made a point of proving in his own magnificent career, is all you’re ever really looking for as a fast bowler. Anything more, and you’re relying on batter error. Anything less, and the best in the business will be finding the middle of their bat.James Anderson leads his team-mates off•AFP/Getty ImagesIf that moment underlined the craft and the cunning that kept Anderson at England’s cutting edge for two decades, then the moments after his drop were arguably a touching throwback: with his sporting mortality now apparent, a slight hint of desperation crept into his game as he neglected, ever so briefly, the processes that had served him so well for so long, and strained instead for that magic ball that both defined and undermined his uncertain start to Test cricket.Fortunately, Atkinson was on hand to save him from himself and allow the curation of those memories to begin. And it was only at that moment that the true imprint of Anderson’s story – that meteoric arrival in the winter of 2002-03, the traumatic rookie years that followed, and the peerless blend of genius and tenacity that prevented him, first, from becoming another of sport’s precocious “what ifs?” before elevating him into a third act of simply astonishing endurance – was able to burst through the façade and take hold of the day’s narrative.No moment better epitomised this than Sky Sports’ breaking of the fourth wall, moments after the contest was over, as Anderson’s first Test captain, Nasser Hussain, joined him on his perch in the dressing-room for a unique fireside chat.Their five-minute exchange was notable, less for Anderson’s composure, than for the rapt attention that he received from every single member of a team that could not have avoided idolising him long before they began sharing his highs and lows.”Moments like that, you take a step back and you actually really appreciate listening,” Stokes recalled afterwards. “Jimmy did say he felt a bit under the pump, because everyone’s just staring at him, but they were pretty special images for the public and the world to be able to see. Everyone was just so interested to hear what Jimmy had to say, from players to support staff as well.”James Anderson can only laugh after dropping a caught-and-bowled chance•Alex Davidson/Getty ImagesStokes himself was 11 when Anderson played his first Test, on this same ground against Zimbabwe in 2003. Ollie Pope, his vice-captain, was 5. Jamie Smith was 2. Shoaib Bashir had not even been born. Even Chris Woakes, the team’s new senior statesman, was a mere 14. Even for a team that has seen some notable departures in recent years, something about this parting is bound to hit different.”When we got back into the dressing-room, I said to Joe [Root], we’ve been with Cookie [Alastair Cook], we’ve been with Broady, and now we’ve been with Jimmy, so that made us realise our age as well. But I feel very fortunate to have played as much cricket as I have done with three Goats of our game.”It’s a very emotional day, but also, what an occasion for the new lads coming in, to be a part of that,” Stokes added. “For Gus and Jamie, in their first taste of international cricket, to see that reception that you can get as England players. Even I’ve played a lot of cricket, but it sends goosebumps down you.”And now, for Stokes and his men, the challenge is to pay all this forward. To make good on the promise that the team management must have had to make to themselves in the first instance, but which the whole of the squad will now have to uphold: to ensure that the sacrifice of Anderson is not in vain, and that the values he has epitomised are not mislaid in the most seismic era shift that English cricket will have known in generations.”Walking off there at the end there, there was that overwhelming feeling of this being the last time that we would get to walk off the field with Jimmy,” Stokes said. “And the last time for the crowds who’ve come out to watch us, to see Jimmy walk off the field. The reception he got there, and for that half an hour afterwards, was very, very special to be part of.”