JIMMY: I’LL GO VEGAN TO SAVE CAREER
JIMMY ANDERSON will consider changing his diet in a bid to prolong his Test career after the disappointment of missing the Ashes through injury — and has even looked at going vegan. Anderson turned 37 two days before the first Test at Edgbaston, where he left the field after just four overs with a recurrence of the calf injury that has spoiled his summer, leaving him on 149 appearances and 575 wickets. But he has set his sights on the two-Test series in New Zealand starting in late November, and says he will do whatever it takes to remain a force in Test cricket. ‘I’ll look at how other sportspeople have done it to keep going into their late 30s,’ he said. ‘Whether there’s anything specific I can do — diet, gym programme, supplements. I’ve still got a real hunger and desire to play cricket. I still love the game and still feel like I can offer something to this team. I still feel like I can be the best bowler in the world.’ Anderson (below) said he would consider chatting to Ryan Giggs, who played for Manchester United until he was 40, and was planning to watch documentary The Game Changers, which charts the rise of plant-based diets among sports stars. Like Australia’s vegan seamer Peter Siddle, he has considered cutting animal and dairy products out altogether. ‘I actually have chatted it through with my wife,’ he said. ‘She’s not keen.’ In the immediate term, Anderson is still trying to deal with his enforced absence from a series which has seen Australia avoid defeat in England for the first time since 2001. ‘It’s been a big disappointment, the whole thing for me. I was gutted when I came off. You can beat yourself up about how, if I’d played the whole game, it might have been a different outcome. But if you dwell on that you send yourself crazy, so I’m trying to park things like that.’ Anderson feels England have not been helped by the pitches prepared this summer. ‘I think they’ve suited Australia more than us,’ he said. ‘I would have liked to have seen a bit more grass, but that’s the nature of the game here. ‘When you’re selling out — like Lancashire selling out five days of Test cricket — it’s hard not to produce a flat deck, but that’s one of the frustrations from a player’s point of view. ‘We go to Australia and get pitches that suit them. They come over here and get pitches that suit them. It doesn’t seem quite right. I feel like we could just be a little bit more biased towards our own team.’ And, with the freshly commissioned batch of 2018 Dukes balls failing to swing, Anderson believes everything played into Australia’s hands. ‘Their bowlers have just been pretty relentless,’ he said. ‘Pat Cummins is the best bowler in the world because he hits the top of off stump at 85mph-plus regularly and he’s got a really good Plan B — he bowls a good bouncer. It’s quite simple what they do but it’s really effective because they do it so consistently.’ As for Steve Smith, Anderson thinks England ‘bowled pretty well at him’, but added: ‘He’s been better than us. We’ve just got
to accept that.’