Today marks 20 years since Sgt. Nasser asked this child to play…
Jimmy Anderson is experiencing his first international match on December 15, 2002, on a sultry late afternoon at the Melbourne Cricket Ground. It’s the first thin gruel. Anderson, with his slender limbs, frosted tips, and statement necklace from the early 2000s, faces the gnarled harshness of Adam Gilchrist and Ricky Ponting.
Both batsmen score hundreds, and Australia defeats Nasser Hussain’s team by 89 runs. It is the second match of the VB one-day series, and due to a cruel scheduling quirk, it takes place between the third and fourth Ashes Tests of 2002-2003. A different time.
Anderson stands out despite his stats. The ODI World Cup is on the horizon, and Hussain is putting his 20-year-old debutant’s feet to the test to see how he handles pressure. Anderson’s opening four overs are remarkable; he is aggressive, skittish, and skilled. His fifth over yields 18 runs, prompting Hussain to remove him from the game and replace him with Ronnie Irani.
James Kirtley is then replaced by Craig White, Anderson’s opening bowling partner. Gareth Batty and Ian Blackwell are the other English bowlers that day. Michael Bevan plays for Australia, while Alec Stewart stands between the wickets. This is a distinct historical period. A pre-Iraq War Tony Blair at No. 10 and a post-Ulrika Sven-Goran Eriksson in command of the English soccer team.
Not persuaded? The Nokia 7650, the first phone with a built-in camera, went on sale in the United Kingdom just a few months prior, yet the smoking ban in England will not take effect for another five years. Anderson’s international career has encompassed the introduction of TikTok and Twitter, the demise of Concorde, and the outbreak of Sars.
Not that the 40-year-old bowler wants to hear about it any longer. He is sick to death of being asked his age, how long he can keep going, how he feels, and what his exercise and vitamin regimen is. He does not believe it is relevant. Age is merely a number to him, and it does not influence the game.
To bolster his argument, he could point to his statistics with one of those deft, Test-match-tilting fingers. The fact that he has recently ascended to second place in the International Cricket Council Test rankings, the old hound barking at Pat Cummins’ youthful heels. If he plays and takes a large number of wickets in Karachi, he might leapfrog Cummins, a position he last held in 2016.
In the first ten years of his Test career, he played 81 matches, took 305 wickets at an average rate of one every 30.1 deliveries, and cost 3.0 runs per over. He may then arrogantly unfold his second decade in an England Test shirt and ask you to take a second look. Ten years: 96 Tests, 370 wickets with a strike rate of 22.82, and an economy rate of 2.52.
He won’t do any of these things; he’ll continue running in and bowling, letting his skills speak for themselves. And perhaps this is what distinguishes him; his longevity is fueled by a desire to learn, adapt, and improve. He is a senior citizen learning new tricks.
Take his “wobble seam” delivery, which he created after observing Pakistan’s Mohammad Asif use a similar technique in the summer of 2010. During the 2010-2011 Ashes campaign, Anderson utilized the “unpredictable” delivery to great advantage, as it allowed the Kookaburra ball to have greater life in favorable conditions.
Ten years later, Anderson refined and improved this style into a “swinging wobble seam” delivery, with which he famously dismissed Virat Kohli last summer. This ability to refine and develop, along with his longevity, distinguishes him from the competition.
Anderson’s explanation of the procedure is fascinating; he is like a scientist seeking a cure or a mathematician attempting to solve an equation. Former England bowling coach Ottis Gibson famously compared Anderson to an artist and Stuart Broad to a scientist, but when it comes to bowling, Jimmy is both.
He remains active. Regaining a taste for bouncers to play a disciplinary role for Lancashire in the County Championship, or just last week, on a pitch designed to shred bones in Rawalpindi, unleashing a slew of off-cutters to shake things up.
He is covered in statistics, wickets, and records like Spanish moss. He might have a whole database to himself, but numbers can be both cruel and kind. Emma Raducanu was born two days before his 2002 international debut, while Rehan Ahmed, his teammate on the current tour of Pakistan, was still unborn.
Anderson’s 429 Test wickets at home in England are higher than the total number of wickets taken by Wasim Akram, Curtly Ambrose, Ian Botham, Malcolm Marshall, Shaun Pollock, Dennis Lillee, Allan Donald, and Bob Willis during their whole careers.
Even though he played his last ODI in 2015, he is still England’s all-time leader in ODI wickets and is approaching 1,000 wickets in all international formats; if he reaches the milestone, he will be the first quick bowler to do so.
Gilchrist slapped a full ball onto his stumps 20 years ago today to become Anderson’s first international victim. Despite his protests, we are now familiar with Anderson’s international act.
