INSIDE THE MIND OF THE INCOMPARABLE JIMMY ANDERSON
From a love of Burnley to rounders and school runs, what makes England’s top wicket-taker tick by those who know him best… ahead of his 188th and final Test
1 HIS WIFE DANIELLA ANDERSON
IT’S been surreal. One minute, not long after we got together, he’s got a broken back and he’s considering giving up. the next, all this has happened.
At the heart of everything has been him knowing his body so well. He’s so finely tuned to it. I wouldn’t say he’s a total saint 100 per cent of the time, but leading up to a series he so obviously knuckles down: starts getting up really early to go to the gym before the school run, trains at Lancashire, does some bowling, eats properly. I’d like to say he sleeps really well, but he doesn’t.
Mentally, he’s just got such a drive, such a desire to win matches for his team. He has never been bothered about milestones, he’s just wanted to keep getting better and over the years, when he’s said he wants to carry on, that is what we’ve talked about.
A few times I’ve gone, ‘OK, this is enough’. But never seriously. He wouldn’t ever have made himself available unless he knew he had it in him to perform. He’d never want to let the team down.
He’s super fit, healthy, strong, and still taking wickets. It’s going to be mental him not playing for England, but there’s big things to come from James because of his attitude of wanting to be the best at whatever he does.
2 HIS SCHOOL MATE GEORGE COPPOCK
JIMMY was just a nice lad. Never super flashy or anything like that. Didn’t get in much trouble. I sat next to him in science and in the classroom he was quiet, did well. He was all-round sporty, but you couldn’t tell he’d become the world’s greatest cricketer. Probably because we didn’t play much cricket. In fact, we only played in the yard at break time and occasionally in PE, and that wasn’t proper cricket.
this wasn’t your typical England player’s private-school Background. We didn’t have the facilities at st theodore’s, in Burnley. We didn’t even have our own cricket pitch.
He will probably kill me for saying this, but the one sport I remember him being pretty good at was rounders!
3 HIS FIRST VICTIM IAN WARD
WHAT immediately struck me was that he had an extremely quick arm action. He was wiry, thin and pacy. Only later did Mike Watkinson teach him to swing the ball properly.
I’ve since seen him dozens of times from the sky commentary box, of course, but what stands out about Jimmy’s bowling for me came during a masterclass we did at Loughborough in 2012.
With a brand new ball, he said, ‘this is how you hold it for the away-swinger’. He ran up, bowled it, it swung away and when we got the ball back, you could see he’d hit the pitch plumb, flush on the seam. Couldn’t have been any better. Next, the in-swinger. Again, plumb on the top of the seam. Middle of middle.
He then said he would bowl the wobble ball. I asked him what the idea was, where did he want the ball to hit? He said he wanted to nip part of the seam. After he struck the top of off-stump, I got the ball back, and it had absolutely nipped part of the seam and a bit of the leather. that kind of skill is just remarkable, really. to do it three times out of three with three different deliveries. Wow.
4 HIS TEAM-MATE CHRIS READ
WE were both selected on an academy trip to Adelaide under Rod Marsh in 2002, and literally a few weeks later this tearaway teen fast bowler from deepest, darkest Lancashire burst on to the international scene.
He wasn’t renowned as a wonderful red-ball bowler then, but after his back injury, he changed his on-field personality and started developing this extraordinary control of line and length.
After coming through the other side of people tinkering with his action, he realised the craft of his bowling was the thing that was going to make him successful. He’s the most skilful bowler I’ve played with or against.
With my England days over, we locked horns in Championship cricket and, although we were good mates, it always felt like I was in a right battle. He’d go past the outside edge, deliver a few words to let me know how poor I was and wanted nothing more than to get me out. Afterwards, a beer in the bar and a chat.
5 HIS CAPTAIN NASSER HUSSAIN
IT felt like he came from nowhere, really. Nowadays, you’d have seen his bowling for Lancashire on social media, but I hadn’t until he joined up with us in Australia in late 2002. He hardly said a word, but would take the ball out of my hand as if to say, ‘Leave it to me, skip’. there was that delivery to Mohammad yousuf in the World Cup match under lights in Cape town — the plans were full and straight to him and Jimmy delivered perfectly. It was obvious he was something special.
Because I saw so much in him, I probably gave him a bit too much responsibility at times, like bowling him towards the end of that World Cup match against Australia in Port Elizabeth. He had a really good slower ball back then — apart from when Andy Bichel picked it, hitting it straight into the electronic scoreboard. But I saw someone who was tough. His first tour was Australia, and contained some pretty difficult situations, yet he bowled beautifully. And you knew when he got back to England he was going to be a handful. As I discovered as the middle dismissal of a hat-trick at Old trafford a week before his test debut. Back then, you didn’t know which way the ball was going to swing until the very last second. A subtle change of action produced a devastating effect.
6 HIS FELLOW TEST DEBUTANT ANTHONY McGRATH
WE got handed our caps by chairman of selectors David Graveney in front of the Members’ Pavilion at Lord’s, and due to Jimmy’s longevity, every year the picture has done the rounds on social media. someone normally posts: ‘Jimmy Anderson and some other guy.’ People who know me find this funny — I tend to get versions forwarded on with me scrubbed out!
He bowled bloody quickly. He’s
gone on to reinvent himself millions of times since but playing with him for England that summer, he really looked to attack the batsman, starting with a five-for in that first Test.
The whole week was great. To make your debut at Lord’s is special and it’s nice for him to finish there as well. What a story that is, with everything he’s done. To think the best ever fast bowler is still playing is remarkable.
7 HIS OPPONENT BRIAN LARA
IT’S a tremendous career he’s had. The length of time he’s played, the wickets he’s taken — he’d be in my top five fast bowlers. You’ve got Anderson, Wasim Akram, Malcolm Marshall, Curtly Ambrose. I will leave the fifth one just in case somebody says, ‘How come you didn’t have so and so?’ Then, I can say: ‘He’s the fifth!’
He was very young when I came up against him at the Oval in 2004 — the last Test I played in England. He dismissed me in the second innings. He bowled a ball that swung in slightly, I aimed towards mid-on and it took my outside edge, because when it hit the wicket it just left me.
8 HIS BOWLING COACH OTTIS GIBSON
THE match of Jimmy’s that I enjoyed most was at Edgbaston in the 2015 Ashes. We’d been on a West Indies tour earlier that year and his pace was down. He had three wickets against Australia and this was the third Test of the series. He wasn’t happy.
Pre-match nets were going on at the nursery ground, but we went into the middle for a one-to-one on where he was in his career, and what he was trying to achieve.
When speaking to Jimmy, you had to have really strong evidence to back up what you were talking about and I said that in the Caribbean, he was throttling back, bowling at 79-80 miles per hour, when in my mind he was at his best between 83-85.
So, we did a bowling session where I stood quite a way back, making him try to get the ball to carry all the way to me. Doing so required a lot more effort, but because he’s a fantastic bowler, things clicked straight away. Later that week, he got six wickets in the first innings, but then blew his side open. Putting those extra couple of yards on came at a cost, but got the rewards. It showed his commitment.
The one thing you get clearly from working with him is that he absolutely loves playing for England. Pulling on that shirt means the world to him.
9 HIS SIDEKICK STUART BROAD
HE’S in pretty elite company alongside Shane Warne and Muttiah Muralitharan, and it has taken an ability to keep challenging the best players in the world in all kinds of different conditions for him to get to 700 Test wickets. One of Jimmy’s great strengths has been to keep delivering at the top level all the way to the eve of his 42nd birthday.
I will be at Lord’s to witness his final match, and will be cheering him on. Throughout my career, I loved his successes and he loved mine. He’s a cricket addict and he will feel very emotional when he finishes up next week as it has been all he has known.
Ideally, he wanted to finish up at the old UK retirement age of 65! The biggest compliment I can pay him is that he’s got better since his mid-30s, and that sums him up — quite incredible.
10 HIS RIVAL NATHAN LYON
THE beauty of county cricket, I guess, is coming over here and playing with arguably the greatest fast bowler to play the game.
It’s been pretty special. No disrespect to the other bowlers in the game (against Nottinghamshire last week), but the class of what Jimmy brings to the table, the extra zip off the wicket, the extra bounce he gets, that ability to go both ways and also bowl the wobble seam…
It was pretty cool being at mid-off and actually have him tell me what he was doing. I’m very surprised that England have said you’ve got one more Test and that’s it. He’s world-class, probably the best ever to play the game as a fast bowler. His skillset is remarkable.
11 HIS LANCASTRIAN MATE DAVID ‘BUMBLE’ LLOYD
I AM from up the road in Accrington, but I was in Burnley recently. It’s a working-class area that doesn’t have much, but what they do have, they make the most of. They love their sport, and Burnley FC have punched above their weight for a long time. But a lad who grew up bowling for Burnley Cricket Club, nestled behind the away end at Turf Moor, has also carried the flag for the town.
He’s one of their own. And even though he’s gone on to great things, to the top of the tree when it comes to fast bowling, he’s never forgotten it.
You can talk about Glenn McGrath. You can talk about Fred Trueman. You can talk about the lot. This lad is at the pinnacle — his statistics tell you that.