Experience allied to craft help sagacious leader prove class
Brought in to spearhead the bowling attack as Broad rests, Anderson shows his qualities remain vital wherever he plays
English Test cricket is in the age of the squad. This winter that means Stuart Broad and James Anderson, the two most prolific wicket-takers in England’s history, are unlikely to play more than a solitary match together – the day-night Test in Ahmedabad.
Yet in Sri Lanka their partnership has continued even while apart. In consecutive Tests, Broad and Anderson have been entrusted with the same role: as sagacious leaders of the attack, able to use the full depth of their craft and experience to defy the conditions.
Broad’s omission from the second Test in Galle was no reflection of his excellence in the first. Instead, it reflected England’s embrace of rotation and desire to give him and Anderson a Test apiece in Sri Lanka.
Just as eight days ago, Sri Lanka chose to bat first. As Broad did then, Anderson’s task was to extract everything from the scintilla of movement that Sri Lankan wickets offer on the first morning, knowing that a five-over new-ball burst was his best chance to impact the course of the Test.
Anderson’s method for doing so was subtly different. He favoured a shorter length than Broad, testing the openers with bounce as well as the morsel of swing and seam on offer. But the essential method – to entice the batsmen to play as much as possible – was the same.
Like Broad last week, who credited “a bit of luck” for the wicket of Lahiru Thirimanne caught at leg slip, Anderson was indebted to his opponent for his opening wicket: Kusal Perera’s harum-scarum thrash in the fifth over.
But fast bowlers in Sri Lanka cannot be picky about their wickets and, through his two previous overs of parsimony, Anderson had made himself more likely to enjoy such fortune. Four balls later, a combination of extra bounce and nip off the seam elicited an inside edge from Oshada Fernando. After Broad’s two for 14 in his five-over spell last week, here Anderson managed two for four.
With even less lateral movement than with the new ball, Anderson resorted to more cutters after lunch. His main asset, though, remained immaculate command of line and length: for his second ball, Anderson went around the wicket to Thirimanne, finding a sliver of movement to extract the edge. In his next burst after tea – a five-over spell that took in a change of ends – Anderson yielded only two runs, locating a smidgen of reverse swing.
In his fourth spell, with the second new ball, Anderson was a little below his best, twice drifting onto the pads, but these errant deliveries merely took his economy rate for the day to a little over one an over. Anderson’s mastery had conceded just 11 scoring shots in 114 deliveries.
Three of England’s four wickets were not just reward for Anderson’s excellence on the day, and his fusion of remarkable fitness and continued zeal for self-improvement deep into his 39th year. The respect with which Sri Lanka played him also felt like reward for his 18 years of terrific Test-match bowling. Like a late-career Shane Warne, the continued threat of Anderson’s bowling is abetted by how his opponents play the man and ball.
In conditions which are the antithesis of England, Anderson and Broad have now snared a combined six for 58 from 45 overs. As he walked off, with the exhausted contentment that accompanies a paceman doing some sterling work in such inhospitable climes, Anderson had reaffirmed that – for all the subcontinent requires seamers to accept a paredback role – his qualities remain vital wherever
he plays.