YEAR HE GOES AGAIN
Anderson hopes it’ll end in Ashes cheers
FOR all that Jimmy Anderson continues to sidestep questions about retirement and his Peter Pan body continues to amaze, this will surely be his final year at the top.
And if it is, as he reflected yesterday, it would be hard to imagine it beginning in stranger circumstances or r potentially, ending with a more glorious full stop.
Holed up in isolation in his hotel room in Hambantota, meals delivered to his door and contact with the squad cut off, Anderson joked it was not touring as he knew it.
Sri Lanka Take 2 following the postponement in March – behind closed doors in more ways than one – will be as different to an Ashes curtain call next winter as could be.
Yet for Anderson, 38, just being on the field will be a blessing and he is excited about what 2021 could still bring.
“It is better than bowling with snowballs in my back garden,” he said, when asked about swapping England for the humidity and spin-friendly wickets of Sri Lanka.
“We have not got a long preparation for this series and don’t have a lot of practice for the first Test, so it’s slightly unusual. But we just have to make the best of it, hit the ground running if and when we get out of quarantine.
“It’s not going to be ideal – Sri Lanka have also been playing Test cricket which maybe gives them a slight advantage. It is something we are going to have to cope with as best we can and be right on the money next Thursday.”
With 11 Tests before the Ashes, Anderson accepts his best chance of making Brisbane – or at least playing a significant part in what would be his fifth trip Down Under and his ninth series against Australia – is to be rotated through 2021.
Ben Stokes and Jofra Archer are missing Sri Lanka and Anderson is wise enough to embrace his spells on the sidelines.
“I’m in as good shape as I have been in my 30s if not better,” he said. “But there’s just so much cricket going on, not just internationally but the domestic T20s – it’s going to take its toll at some point.
“So I think as in the summer, there might be rotation going forward.”