Daily Mirror

WAKEY! WAKEY!

Vice-captain Anderson wants England stars to ‘chirp up’ and have their say

- FROM DEAN WILSON Cricket Correspond­ent From Hamilton d.wilson@trinitymir­ror.com

JAMES ANDERSON is urging his England teammates to start making their voices heard after the Ashes flop.

The return of Ben Stokes will certainly add more noise and character to the side in New Zealand, despite not being given the vice-captaincy back with his trial for affray set for August.

But Anderson, who will continue to fill the role of No.2 to captain Joe Root, wants to encourage more from a team where the likes of Jonny Bairstow, Moeen Ali, Chris Woakes and Dawid Malan must play a big role in its developmen­t.

“I’m delighted Joe’s asked me to do it again for these two Test matches,” said Anderson. “But it’s a group effort, a team, we need everybody’s input.

“We need the younger guys to start chirping up a bit more to be honest and having some more input.

“That’s what we want to do as a team – get to a point where everyone has their say. We’ve got an open and honest dressing-room, all we’re trying to do is improve this team.

“It probably is one of the quieter dressing rooms. I think the Ashes wouldn’t have helped in that respect because that’s as pressurise­d an environmen­t as you can get. Hopefully we can kick on from there.”

Anderson is yet to take the reins fully from Root for a match, but he had to take on duties such as “fending off Geoffrey Boycott” as he puts it, after the fifth Test in Sydney when the skipper was unwell.

The 35-year-old bowler remains England’s most experience­d cricketer and it is fitting that he is back in New Zealand 10 years after his career really took off when he and Stuart Broad replaced Steve Harmison and Matthew Hoggard in Wellington and never looked back.

Not only has he gone on to become England’s most successful wicket-taker of all time, but he is in the richest vein of form of his career, capturing 55 wickets in 2017 at just 17.5 apiece.

And England still need plenty more from both him and Broad, currently on 399 Test wickets, if they are to succeed first in New Zealand and then against Pakistan and India this summer.

Anderson added: “I was really delighted with how things went for me and my body in Australia. To get through it without injury was great. “It’s really nice for me and Broady to be back where we started our partnershi­p, with him on the verge of a massive milestone.

“We both feel really positive about things.”

 ??  ?? LOUD AND CLEAR Jimmy Anderson is demanding more input from Bairstow, Woakes, Moeen and Malan
LOUD AND CLEAR Jimmy Anderson is demanding more input from Bairstow, Woakes, Moeen and Malan

Newspapers in English

Newspapers from United Kingdom