Miss You Already
A eulogy to the departed Jimmy Anderson and the wonderful skills he has perfected
I actually wrote this for the Sunday Times. But I thought I’d share it on here for those who missed it.
It was not just the departure of a great cricketer that made everyone misty eyed on Friday at Lord’s. It was also, subliminally perhaps, a realisation of what Jimmy Anderson represents. He is the master of a fading art – the ability to make a round, shiny ball bend in the air to his will, swinging one way then the other, toying with the batter’s security, leading him this way and that – a beautiful deceit achieved with delicate, finger-tip control – before going in for the kill. Each wicket was a story of temptation and trickery. It was magnificent narrative. There were 704 chapters.
His final wicket on Friday was a classic example. Bowling to the West Indies wicketkeeper Joshua de Silva from the Nursery End, where he first started his Test career 21 years ago, he sent down a couple of exploratory deliveries wide of the stumps which didn’t require a shot. He smiled to himself – the ball was swinging encouragingly. He straightened up his line and de Silva worked the ball to mid-wicket. He dragged his length back slightly. Defended. He projected fuller and wider. Left alone. He tried again. This time De Silva was left groping as the ball swung tantalisingly out of reach.
The first ball of his next over was angled into towards off-stump on an enticing length, the seam canted subtly towards first slip. Spying a scoring opportunity De Silva went to drive it through the onside but the ball ducked away late to take the edge gleefully accepted by England’s new keeper Jamie Smith who was just three years old when Anderson made his Test debut.
Anderson’s last Test wicket - no. 704
It was a glorious moment and Anderson’s bowling is a thing of beauty. There is a balletic purity to the way he dances to the wicket, unfurls his tightly coiled arms and pivots at the crease to flick the ball from his cocked wrist, the torque naturally applied generating that delicious late swing. The speed and movement are a product of the perfect synchronisation of hundreds of muscles and tendons that take years to groove. He has put approximately 20,000 tonnes through his knees and ankles (40,000 deliveries multiplied by six times his body weight) in the quest for this athletic perfection. It is a miracle he is still standing never mind bowling.
Anderson has attained a sort of bowling Nirvana. After years of experimentation and exploration he knows he has total control of his body and the ball. But swing is fickle. It is mysteriously elusive. It comes and goes on the cricket gods’ whim. The modern game does not have time to wait for it to materialise. Seaming the ball is more in vogue. It does not require quite the same precision of release or ideal atmospheric conditions and is harder to combat as it happens off the pitch (rather than in the air) therefore closer to the batter.
The ‘wobble’ seam is king, superbly exploited by Gus Atkinson on his Test debut. He does not seek movement in the air using the seam as a rudder, he releases the ball from a good height and at high speed with a crooked seam hoping for misbehaviour – uneven bounce or deviation - off the pitch. He is a ‘line’ bowler – more mechanical in execution than Anderson’s hand-crafted expertise – but he utilised the vagaries of the Lord’s slope just as well as the robotic Glenn McGrath has on many occasions in the past. And wobble seam is the route the game is going down.
Anderson is partially the architect of his departure. He was the bowler who inherited the idea of wobble seam from Australia’s Stuart Clark and Pakistan’s Mohammed Asif and honed the technique, positioning his fingers wider on the ball to enable the seam to oscillate as it flies towards the batter and then jags unpredictably one way or t’other on pitching. If on a particular day Anderson discovers the ball is not swinging he will soon resort to wobble seam. The Sultan of Swing is also the Wizard of Wobble. His unquenchable thirst for self-improvement has unearthed new methods of wicket-taking eagerly lapped up by his cohorts.
Jimmy Anderson’s three main grips
As with the reverse sweep (actually pioneered by Mushtaq Mohammed in the 1970s) and reverse swing (first utilised by Dennis Lillee and Imran Khan also in the 70s) these techniques are not necessarily new. A previous Gus – Angus Fraser – took 177 Test wickets in the 1990s with wobble seam. It just wasn’t called that. “The way the ball came out of my hand naturally was with the seam coming down like a windscreen wiper,” he said, adding, “Mike Gatting and John Emburey used to bollock me for missing the seam when bowling with the new ball.” (So did I, if truth be told, as the shine got scuffed, inhibiting my attempts to swing it. But Fraser was more successful and reliable than me.)
From Fred Trueman, through Ian Botham and Chris Old to Dominic Cork, Matthew Hoggard, Chris Woakes and Anderson himself (not forgetting Stuart Broad to left handers), swing bowlers have always been prominent in English cricket. But it is hard to identify them now. Surrey’s Dan Worrell is the most notable. The England hierarchy is keener to invest in quicker, taller ‘line’ bowlers like Josh Tongue, Matt Potts, Dillon Pennington and Atkinson with a more direct approach to wicket-taking.
Unleashing that 85mph delivery that swings through the air, whistles past the edge and soars into the keeper’s gloves is thrilling and deeply satisfying. It is addictive. But England aren’t seeking satisfaction, they are after results, so Jimmy may be the last of the line. We will miss the man who was not just a bowling maestro but a unique marriage of science and art.
Jimmy Anderson tribute podcast HERE
Great insight into the workings of a legend of the game especially on his wobble seam. How is Bumrah's bowling so different from a technical point of view. Does he bowl swing, seam, wobble seam ? What is it that makes him so lethal and threatening every time he comes on to bowl or is he freak who cannot be categorised under seam or swing bowler ?
A real case study in point.
Disappointed to see not many good left arm bowlers around especially in test cricket except Starc, Shaheen Afridi. Burger looks promising and Arshdeep if he plays the longer format