Peter Hayter – Jimmy recall was the right move
Many England supporters, blinking sleep from their eyes at some ungodly hour to view the opening morning of England’s second Test against India, may well have carried on blinking when they saw the name of James Anderson on the team sheet.
By the time the long day had ended in Visakhapatnam, they and everyone else had their answer to questions over his inclusion; if Anderson’s fit to play, he plays, every time, every place, everywhere.
On the face of it, there seemed sound reasons for delaying the 34-year-old’s return until the third match of the series in Mohali, as had been widely predicted.
Though Anderson felt he had recovered sufficiently from the stress fracture of the shoulder that forced him to miss the tour to Bangladesh – and experience tells us that he would rather have his monobrow shaved with a blunt penknife than miss out on a Test cap – England could have been forgiven for erring on the side of caution and allowing him another ten days of rehab.
Alastair Cook’s side may not have won the first match in Rajkot, but they did everything but, no-one in the XI that came so close there deserved to miss out, so, if it weren’t broke, why fix it?
If Anderson was to come back, with three spinners clearly necessary again, which of Stuart Broad or Chris Woakes could you, in all conscience, leave out?
On the eve of the match coach Trevor Bayliss went so far as to state: “We did say before Bangladesh that seven Tests in eight weeks would be difficult and we would change guys, but I’m not envisaging any changes.”
Even at the toss, when announcing that Anderson had been selected for the “rotated” Woakes, the skipper’s assessment of his mate’s preparedness hardly amounted to a ringing endorsement of the decision.
“Jimmy’s ready to play,” said Cook, “or, as ready as he can be without any match practice.”
Yet while England were sweating on how well the leader of their attack would rock up after his first full day in the field since August, his performance on the flattest of batting tracks underlined the utter irrelevance of all discussions over whether he should have been given the chance to produce it.
Searching for early swing, he soon realized there was little on offer so shifted the line and length of his attack back and towards off stump to the right-hander and the fact that he managed to get Murali Vijay to glove one on this featherbed to be caught by Ben Stokes in the gully proved that his body was more than capable of doing exactly what his brilliant bowling brain demanded.
He might have struck again, two balls later, when Virat Kohli, attempting to follow up a boundary through the covers, got a top edge and escaped with a four to fine leg.
That horse was over the hills and far away by the time Anderson struck again, control having been wrested from England’s back-up bowlers, much to his obvious frustration, by Kohli and Cheteshwar Pujara and the No3 seemed culpable of losing focus when he gave Anderson his second wicket, chasing a wide ball to Jonny Bairstow.
But members of the pace bowler’s union (chairman Sir Ian Botham) will no doubt correct us that the bowler had sensed Pujara’s state of disconnect and dangled the carrot intentionally.
Anderson’s continuing and almost constant threat was re-emphasised in the penultimate over when he coaxed enough movement from the new ball to have Ajinkya Rahane caught behind and would have had Ravi Ashwin gobbled up in the gully two deliveries later, if only the captain had been alert enough to have one.
Figures can lie, of course. But, finishing the day with 3-44, from India’s total of 317-4, the truth of his performance was that it was every bit that good, England will know how bad things might have been without him and, while Woakes must surely return in Mohali, as far as Anderson is concerned it must continue to be every time, every place and everywhere for the foreseeable future.
“His performance on the flattest of batting tracks underlined the utter irrelevance of all discussions over whether he should have been given the chance to produce it "