RUNS REAL PACE ANDSKIN LIKE A RHINO
Anderson’s blueprint for Ashes success in Australia
JAMES ANDERSON has given England his blueprint for Ashes success in four years time – more runs and more pace.
It is a simple formula that does not take a rocket scientist nor even a man with 500-plus Test wickets to work out, but England simply ignored it for this tour.
They arrived in Australia with only one batsman knowing what it was like to score a Test hundred out here and with three of the top six having never scored a Test ton in their lives.
When it came to pace they never stood a chance with the only current Test-class Englishman capable of bowling regularly above 90mph, Mark Wood (right, bottom), still recovering from injury and playing for the Lions.
“We’ve got to score more runs,” he said “We need big hundreds and that’s one area we need to improve.
“We’ve seen in all the Test matches, the team that has won or got on top has been the one with people scoring big scores, big hundreds, like us in this game with Cooky. It would be great if we could get someone who could bowl 90mphplus, just to have that X factor.
“If you put Starc on that pitch or someone who bowls above 90mph, they kind of take the pitch out of the equation.”
Just like Alastair Cook (right), who he has played alongside more than 100 times, Anderson spoke with honesty, as befits someone who has been there, done it and seen it all, with a hint of the same self-deprecation.
“I know my speed dropped off into my 58th and 59th overs,” he “On that pitch, I was bowling it, looking up at the speed and then Steve Smith was hitting it.”
It was the same honesty he used when pondering whether Australia’s pace bowling strength in depth might not be that great behind their first-choice trio, which resulted in a huge backlash Down Under.
Jackson Bird replaced the injured Mitchell Starc at the MCG and took 0-108, which suggests Anderson actually had a point – not that he is worried about what others think these days.
“I was just speaking factually. I wasn’t trying to have a dig at anyone, trying to slag them off. I didn’t realise it got as much traction as it did, but I just spoke my mind at the time.
“I don’t really care what people think of me and it does help to be like that. You can’t worry about ex-players or whoever, whether they are opposition exadded. players or even English ex-players, you’ve got to try to block them out.
“It doesn’t get better. I think you’ve got to have a thick skin, definitely. There was a guy shouting at me today, ‘You can’t bowl with a Kookaburra’. And I said, ‘You might have a point there’. Try to brush it off in your own way.”
The unfounded accusation of ball-tampering was a case in point.
“That escalated quite quickly, didn’t it?” said Anderson. “Ridiculous, but what we’ve come to expect. It’s just something we’ve got to put up with. It does get boring at times.”