When Jimmy Anderson pauses at the top of his mark at Old Trafford this week, he will have his neat white boots on familiar clod.
But much has changed since the almost 41-year-old Anderson first set foot on the ground as a fresh‑faced and nervous teenager. Not only has the Pavilion End been renamed the James Anderson End in his honour, marked out in red lettering, but the whole place has gone through a transformation.
It was 30 years ago in June that a peroxided and unbuttoned Shane Warne fizzed out his ball of the century to Mike Gatting from the Warwick Road End, to a half‑hearted chorus of boos. Pete Marron, the head groundsman at Old Trafford for 25 years, used to joke with Warne that he was the man who had made him famous – and there was something in that, with Marron a man with magic in his earthy fingers. His pitch for the 2005 Ashes, for which people queued through the night and 20,000 were locked out on the final day, was another classic, full of life until the very last ball – after Ricky Ponting and then Brett Lee and Glenn McGrath batted away the best that Andrew Flintoff and Steve Harmison could throw at them.
But just a year after that mega‑series, Old Trafford learned that it would miss out on a 2009 Ashes Test. The Lancashire hierarchy were horrified at the time, but it was probably a much‑needed kick up the backside to modernise the ground, though one that turned into a long‑running battle producing many fraught moments plus the odd surreal one, like when Lanky the giraffe pushed his way into a council meeting to protest.
However, the controversial sale of land for the development of a huge Tesco was passed, and the club were saved from bankruptcy. They were awarded an Ashes Test in 2013 and not only did a couple of alien red Lego buildings land around the boundary, but the pitch was moved 90 degrees from its east-west sitting, to north-south. In one stroke this both struck off the Warwick Road End and the Stretford End from the scorebook, and removed the chance that batters would have to see out the evening session with the setting sun directly in their eyeline.
When Marron died in 2015, aged just 59, tributes flew in from players who had the privilege of playing on his pitches. From Michael Vaughan, who tweeted that he “created the best cricket pitches in the world”, to Alec Stewart, who wrote: “Great man & great groundsman who produced some of the best pitches I played on.” In 2008 Marron had handed over the reins of Old Trafford to Matt Merchant, who joined the groundstaff after he left school and whose parents were the landlords of the local Quadrant pub, where Marron used to go for a drink. Merchant has proved himself more than capable of walking in his predecessor’s footsteps, producing excellent pitches despite Manchester’s sometimes inclement weather – picking up three awards for grounds manager of the year.
And all eyes are on Old Trafford again, after Headingley’s Ashes pitch, curated by Richard Robinson, behaved like a dream. But there have been only two County Championship games at Old Trafford this year – so even the keenest eyes have found it difficult to read the runes for the Test pitch. The first was over the Easter weekend, where Surrey dominated the first three days but were unable to dismiss Lancashire on day four; the second against Somerset in May, when the teams couldn’t come to an agreement over what equalled a fair declaration and target, and the final afternoon played out with Lancashire’s batters bowling and even the wicketkeeper, George Bell, peeling off his pads to send down a few overs.
But it seems safe to guess that the brouhaha over the lack of a men’s Test in the north of England during the 2027 Ashes series may have as much to do with the players’ liking for the character of northern pitches as for their taste for the raucous nature of the crowds.
The last couple of weeks have been damp bordering on soaking in Manchester, and rumbling thunder kept the players training indoors on Monday. England have not beaten Australia at Old Trafford since Botham pulled off the best century of his career in 1981, while Anderson, who returns to the England XI after sitting on the sidelines as Headingley erupted around him, has not played in a Test victory against Australia since 2015. Merchant will be doing his best to ensure that Anderson can say farewell to Old Trafford with an Ashes win, because even England’s great immortal seems unlikely to be holding back the years in 2031.
