Ashes 2013: England's Jimmy Anderson heading towards greatness - Telegraph
The Ashes
Ashes 2013: England's Jimmy Anderson heading towards greatness
Michael Holding, the West Indies fast bowler who was known as ‘Whispering    Death’, has a good yardstick for judging bowlers. Only when one has taken at    least four wickets-per-Test over a long period of time, can they be    considered ‘great’.
Star: Jimmy Anderson celebrates another Australian wicket in his match-winning performance for England Photo: AFP/Getty Images
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Of quick bowlers Fred Trueman managed it, and so did Australia’s Glenn McGrath, the irrepressible New Zealander Richard Hadlee and the exceptional West Indian Malcolm Marshall.
With his 10 wickets, Jimmy Anderson nudged closer to that milestone. He now has 317 wickets in 83 Tests. He is on the verge of greatness.
Anderson’s second 10-wicket haul at Trent Bridge was very different from his first three years ago, against Pakistan, and illustrates how much he has developed in that time.
Those wickets were mostly top-order players dismissed using lavish, conventional swing with the new, or newish ball. Here virtually all his wickets were achieved by making a roughed up ball move one way or another.
This has been the major enhancement in his game – finding just enough movement in the air or off the surface with an older ball and utilising it brilliantly.
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In that sense he is peerless. No one else has his range of skills and adaptability, nor given his 13-over spell on Sunday morning, his stamina.
He cruised into bowl for an hour and a half, unwaveringly, unstintingly, with metronomic accuracy. In those 13 overs he conceded only three boundaries, and two of those were off the edge, as he probed away relentlessly around off-stump, insistent with his questioning of the batsman’s technique.
Like the great Hadlee – a similar style of bowler to Anderson – he is an indefatigible examiner.
Hadlee once said that an over was like having six bullets in a gun and you used each bullet strategically to get your opponent into a vulnerable position before nailing him.
Since Anderson has teamed up with England’s bowling coach David Saker, you can see him doing that.
On day four Anderson was moving the left-handed Chris Rogers around the crease, drawing him across his stumps with a succession of balls curving away delivered from round the wicket, trying to get him overbalancing and pinning him lbw with one that went the other way.
Eventually he got him with a cutter that had the same effect, causing him to chip a catch to midwicket as he fell over. Anderson signalled acknowledgement to Saker after that wicket.
On the final day, he immediately struck up a superb rhythm and began nagging away incessantly at Brad Haddin’s resolve. The pitch had gone to sleep, but there was just enough reverse swing to keep him watchful.
Anderson swung a few away, Haddin was resolutely behind them. He tried the odd inswinger. Haddin, hanging on the back foot fearing lbws, playing the ball as late as possible, defiantly kept them out. He gave him nothing to hit.
The ball he eventually dismissed Ashton Agar was superbly contrived, as it was proceeded by inswingers from round the wicket, forcing him to play, then a ball that was angled in on the same line but curved away and drew a fatal prod to one he could have left.
Reverse swing permits this kind of precise interrogation. It is more controllable than conventional swing. Once the ball is in the required state, you know as a bowler it will go the way you intend, and usually the degree too. Normal – ie new ball – swing is far less well behaved.
It is like a supermarket trolley. It has a mind of its own. Unless your release is exactly right, the seam in a perfect position, conventional swing is highly unco-operative. Start it on off stump and it will go. Start it on leg stump and it will not.
Anderson is at the forefront of England's ball management as they strive to get one side as worn and ragged as possible.
He is the one mainly bowling wobble-seam deliveries that land by the side of the seam rather than on it, he is the one who shies at the stumps from mid-on, deliberately bouncing the ball in the dirt around the wicket-ends, it is he who cradles the ball delicately between his thumb and forefinger as he is polishing it to avoid getting his sweaty palms on the parched leather.
On dry pitches, reverse swing is actually a more dangerous weapon than spin when employed by an operator as slick as Anderson. Graeme Swann will happily concede that.
He was, of course, indebted to the fielders for his match-winning performance, not just Alastair Cook’s slip catching but Ian Bell’s agility, too.
Twice he dived at extra cover and prevented a single to Haddin. It was this that persuaded him to chase a slightly wider length ball with a hint of inswing that induced the crucial edge.
He had taken all four of the wickets England required in 15 flawless overs at a personal cost of just 29.
Anderson might not be a ‘great’ quite yet, but, green pitch or bare, he has become, for Australia , Public Enemy No1.
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