It was a slow sort of day’s play at Lord’s, a prop-your-hands-behind-your-head, and swing-your-feet-up-on-the-chair-in-front-of-you sort of afternoon. The match has been drifting towards a predictable finish ever since the West Indies’ batting collapse on Wednesday morning, and midway through the second day MCC staff were already worrying about whether or not they ought to prepare an announcement about ticket refunds on the third. No one else around the ground seemed to be too worried. The sun was out, and the stands buzzed with idle chit chat about this and that, shoes, ships, sealing wax, facts and stats about Jimmy Anderson.
These have become a genre of their own, like those old Chuck Norris jokes. Turns out Anderson has bowled just under 4% of all the deliveries the England team have ever sent down in Test cricket, and taken just over 4% of all their wickets too. If you add up the yardage he’s covered while running in to bowl, the total would cover the distance from Lord’s to the cricket ground in Berwick-upon-Tweed. He has bowled more balls in Test cricket than 34 of the 40 English fast bowlers who made their debut after him combined. And he has bowled more maidens than all but 30 of the other 492 men who bowled for England did overs.
Anderson played with 109 England players altogether, another record. The latest, and last, was Jamie Smith, the young Surrey keeper-batsman who was waiting in the middle when Anderson walked out to bat for the very last time in Test cricket. Smith was on 66, and had just hit an almighty six over the Tavern Stand and out of the ground. Smith was born just a couple of months after Anderson made his debut in List A cricket. He is 23, and has come to the England team by way of Whitgift School, Sutton CC, and the Surrey and England age groups. On Thursday, he took to Test cricket with the easy air of a man who was born for it.
Smith has quick feet, a tidy defence, and a whipcrack bat when he’s on the attack. In this match he found himself in the awkward position of being picked ahead of his friend, and county teammate, Ben Foakes. Foakes is, everyone agrees, a better wicketkeeper, but who has been dropped on the grounds that he needed to do a better job of getting on with it when he was batting together with the tail. Which is exactly what Smith did. He took his time over his first 50, which came off 97 balls, then clobbered his last 20 off just 23. Up on the balcony, Brendon McCullum had the satisfied air of a man whose judgement had been vindicated, again.
Well as Smith played, he still found himself in the unusual position of being booed by his team’s own fans, who chided him for refusing to give Anderson the strike after he came in to bat. Anderson’s batting has always been the merriest thing about his cricket, for years he was a bloody-minded nightwatchman, proud holder of the English record for playing the most innings in Test cricket without once being dismissed for a duck. He is, don’t forget, the man who batted out the draw against Australia in partnership with Monty Panesar at Cardiff back in 2009, and who put on a world record 198 with Joe Root for the 10th wicket against India at Trent Bridge in 2014.
He’s also the owner of an occasional cover drive that earned him the nickname the Burnley Lara, and, bizarrely, one of the very best reverse sweeps in the game. Unfortunately, the presumptuous young Smith didn’t seem to much trust him to do any of it, and refused to run for a single which would have given him the strike. Instead, Smith crashed a four through square leg, and then got himself caught on the boundary trying to do it again. So Anderson turned around and trooped back off the field to take his pads off. His final innings came and went without him having to face, and he was left with a last unbeaten duck, for a grand total of 1,353 runs at an average of 8.96.
Anderson stopped before he got off, then patted Smith on the back, and let him lead the way over the boundary rope. His farewell Test is turning into a game that will end up being better remembered for the debuts made by Smith and Gus Atkinson, which seems an oddly fitting way for such a self-effacing man to finish his Test cricket.
