Jimmy Anderson shows there is plenty of life in oldest swinger

It looked like the simplest little trick, as predictable and familiar as a father’s are to his teenage son. In the first over of this Test, Jimmy Anderson bowled five deliveries across Shan Masood, which made him lean across and reach for the ball outside off. Then, in his second over, Anderson swung the ball back into him. The ball was a little too short and a little too wide on the leg side the first time he tried it, so Anderson did it all again, fuller and straighter this time, and, whump, the ball thumped into that front pad, which looked, all of a sudden, as colossal and unavoidable as the white cliffs of Dover.

So Masood, who had batted so well in the first Test, was swiftly dealt with. It was the seventh time Anderson has got Masood out in Test cricket, which puts him in good company, right alongside Che Pujara, Kumar Sangakkara, and Jacques Kallis in the list of players Anderson has dismissed most often. He’s made bunnies of many better batsmen.

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It was such a deft and brilliant little bit of bowling, but, because he has done it so often before, and because the whole thing felt so utterly inevitable, it was hard not to take it for granted. Later in the day, he had Azhar Ali caught at slip off an away-swinger, too.

Those were wickets 591 and 592, and on Friday he added 593 when he had Yasir Shah caught behind. These three were no more remarkable, really, than any of the many he’s taken before. But they made headlines just because of what went on at Old Trafford, where Anderson took one wicket for 97, his worst figures in a Test in England since he took 0 for 137 against Australia at Lord’s in 2015. Set against that, his bowling in this match in Southampton seemed like some kind of comeback. But really, a few years ago, we would hardly have noticed, it would just be a typical little swing of form, a bowler off one week, on again the next.

But Anderson is 38, and at that age, you’re not allowed the luxury of being inconsistent, even when you are as good as he is, and have taken as many wickets as he has. Anderson addressed all this in a press conference in between the two matches. He was admirably frank, just as Stuart Broad had been when he was left out of the team for the first Test against West Indies. Anderson spoke about how badly he’d bowled, said that if he carried on that way then the decision about when to retire would be taken out of hands, but he said, too, how he resented the rumours about his retirement that he had heard were swirling around Old Trafford.

There had been some noises-off, apparently, whispers that maybe the TV broadcasters ought to get his career highlights reel ready. “I don’t think that’s really fair,” Anderson said. “Everyone has a bad game every now and then. That’s how I look at it. I’ll work hard to try and put things right next week if I get the chance.” He did, and he has. But that doesn’t mean those rumours are going to go away any time soon.

Anderson is right, it is unfair that he has to put up with them, but they will be there with him right through to the end of his career, whenever that may be. The best thing he can do is to stop worrying about them.

The talk about when and whether he’ll quit will be an unavoidable accompaniment to these final few months of his career, just like it is, and always has been, for every great player in their later years. And the truth is that, watching Anderson this summer, it has felt like his game is just beginning to fray.

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He has said himself that he doesn’t take his wickets in a rush any more, but picks them up in ones and twos, and it’s hard not to notice that he has not taken a wicket in the second innings of any of the last three Tests he’s played, which does make you wonder whether it might be taking him a little longer to recover from his opening spells.

It would be odd if he wasn’t. Anderson is an extraordinary athlete. It does not mean he is impervious to the effects of aging, any more than the fact that he’s a little less incisive than he used to be means that he doesn’t still have a role to play in this team as a new ball bowler, and the senior man in the attack, ready to pass on what he’s learned to the younger bowlers he is playing with.

There will be a few more of those thumping lbws yet, a few more batsmen done by the one that comes back in at him, much as Masood, and everyone else who faces him, must wish he would hurry up and finish already.