JAMES ANDERSON REVERSES BALL, AND AGE

cartwheel. Ajinkya Rahane was done in by a replica in the same over. And with those two deliveries, the match was virtually over, setting the stage for England’s 227-run win.

There is no other cricketer playing now for any team who has featured in four Test victories against India in India. It’s just what Anderson does. He has played a critical role in not one but three victorious Ashes campaigns, and he had begun his Test career with a fifer on debut.

Yet, like all long careers, he has had his share of struggles.

Soon after his debut he was shunted into the background, at best used as a net bowler. He worked on changing his action, lost both pace and accuracy. An injury kept him out for most of 2006. The very next year, Anderson came back into cricket a transformed bowler — not a tearaway with raw aggression any more, but a bowler with an unmatched arsenal of weapons.

In England, he marked his second coming with a sevenwicket haul in an innings against New Zealand. By 2010, he had also found an accuracy that made him nearly unplayable. He showed that off on the grandest stage, picking up 24 wickets in the 2010-11 Ashes tour of Australia to hand England the urn.

It is also fitting that in 2018, Anderson went past Glen Mcgrath’s record for most Test wickets by a fast bowler with the wicket of Mohammed Shami in a 4-1 rout over India — it was his 564th wicket, and he had taken more of those against India than any other opponent.

It established his credentials as England’s GOAT (greatest of all time) — at least in the bowling department. And from 564 to 611 — Rishabh Pant in Chennai — Anderson, if it’s possible, only seems to be getting sharper.