And batsman. Who knew?

Well, we all knew about the swing bowling. Trent Bridge might be the home ground of Ryan Sidebottom and Stuart Broad, but Jimmy Anderson’s the best swing bowler in this England side and he duly played a blinder, taking all six of the New Zealand wickets to fall.

Swing bowling dismissals don’t come more satisfying than Aaron Redmond’s and Brendon McCullum’s. It’s all well and good trying to work a straight ball into the onside, but when your off stump goes racing towards the sightscreen like it’s a solitary spoke in an invisible wheel, you know you’ve made a bad choice - a swig of aged milk kind of a choice.

Jimmy Anderson has the sense to bowl his full outswinger again and again when things are happening with the ball. There’s no point getting too clever. Crucially, he bowls an inswinger about once every four overs. It’s not really his wicket-taker, but it means the batsman tends to play at wider outswingers ‘just in case’. Wickets ensue.

Jimmy says himself that his bowling can go either way though. If his first over goes well, he feels confident and all’s dandy. If it goes badly, he tries to work out what’s going wrong and from there what’s usually going wrong is that he’s trying to work out what’s going wrong and getting all awkward as a consequence. It’s like when someone watches you walk and you suddenly turn into a robot with too few joints that’s being controlled by a ZX Spectrum.

It’s like that bit in Jurassic Park where Jeff Goldblum explains chaos theory by dropping a spot of water onto the back of a peaked hand, only instead of there being a multitude of potential outcomes, in Anderson’s case there are only two. Either the droplet goes down one side, marked ‘conceding seven an over’ or it goes down the other side marked ‘6-42′.

England v New Zealand, third Test at Trent Bridge, day two
England 364 (Kevin Pietersen 115, Tim Ambrose 67, Stuart Broad 64, Iain O’Brien 4-74, Kyle Mills 3-76)
New Zealand 96-6 (James Anderson 6-42)

Tags: England, James Anderson, New Zealand by King Cricket
10 Comments »

Are we right in thinking that James Anderson came in as a nightwatchman in order to protect Ryan Sidebottom? This is beyond reason.

Our feelings about nightwatchmen are perfectly clear, but this warrants further comment. If James Anderson is functioning as the nightwatchman, it’s been his job to protect Ryan Sidebottom from the horrendous peril that is batting in the evening.

Ryan Sidebottom, lest we forget, was the man entrusted with protecting Ian Bell from that horrendous fate during the last Test - a job he singularly failed to do.

James Anderson’s protecting the man who usually protects the batsmen from playing at a certain time of day. Got it. It’s totally justified.

Tags: England, James Anderson, New Zealand by King Cricket
13 Comments »

Yes, ‘knacks’. We’re not the BBC here, you know. We don’t have to use proper Standard English words, like ‘knackers’.

Actually, we do like to use the word ‘knackers’, but only as a noun. For the verb, we favour ‘to knack’.

It was one of those days where you’re waiting for the next innings before it gets interesting again. England were a fair way ahead from the start and had plenty of wickets in hand. It was a good one to sleep through, particularly considering England’s batsmen decided to drive home the blanditude by getting about 40-odd each rather than ducks or hundreds.

Then, after the close of play, Anderson knacked his ankle playing football. A couple of years ago, he did much the same thing playing squash. It’s probably for the best that he’s not so susceptible to cricketing ankle injuries, being as cricket’s his job.

We have sympathy. We’ve got an ankle injury too. It’s from the ‘running’. We pretty much always get some sort of injury when we try to do ‘running’, even though we do far more twisty-turny sports regularly with no ill-effects. We don’t have an international sporting career that’s spoilt by our ankle injury though. We don’t have a career that could be spoilt by anything, because we don’t have a career. What luxury.

New Zealand v England, second Test at Wellington - day three
England 342 (Tim Ambrose 102, Paul Collingwood 65, Mark Gillespie 4-79, Jacob Oram 3-46)
New Zealand 198 (Ross Taylor 53, Daniel Vettori 50 not out, James Anderson 5-73, Paul Collingwood 3-23)
England 277-9 (Alastair Cook 60, Paul Collingwood 59, Jacob Oram 3-44)

Tags: England, James Anderson, New Zealand by King Cricket
7 Comments »

As in ‘returned’. He hasn’t got ankylosing spondylitis or anything. To think it’s been almost a year since we last made that joke. How time flies.

James Anderson has a bit of a reputation for - and you have to use these exact words - ’spraying it around’. While this is fair on the face of it, we don’t think it tells the full story.

We’ve watched James Anderson play for Lancashire a heap of times. Not once has he done any spraying. Not even to mark his territory, like a cat. Generally speaking, Anderson’s Lancashire spells are characterised by a lot of playing and missing from the batsman, the occasional wicket and not a great deal else.

Remember when he bowled that ten over spell that only went for 12 runs against Australia. In 40 degree heat. In a one-day match. James Anderson can keep it tight.

Maybe it’s the white ball. Maybe it’s playing for England. Maybe it’s playing for England knowing you’re due to get dropped quite soon. Whatever it is, Anderson’s a more accurate bowler than you might think.

Yesterday he seemed to bowl a few too many deliveries that the batsmen could comfortably leave. But if you looked at the old pitch map that shows where the ball’s been landing, you saw that all the deliveries lined up between his arm and off stump. They were just different lengths and for some reason James Anderson deliveries swing a lot more once they’ve pitched, so the shorter ones end up quite wide.

We made a noise when he cleaned up Matthew Bell. We haven’t often made noises at wickets this winter. Bell might have played a crap shot, but some of his colleagues played straighter to similar balls and still got out.

More of this kind of thing, Jimmy. More of this kind of thing!

New Zealand v England, second Test at Wellington - day two
England 342 (Tim Ambrose 102, Paul Collingwood 65, Mark Gillespie 4-79, Jacob Oram 3-46)
New Zealand 198 (Ross Taylor 53, Daniel Vettori 50 not out, James Anderson 5-73, Paul Collingwood 3-23)
England 4-0

Tags: England, James Anderson, New Zealand by King Cricket
11 Comments »

We have several other points to make about the Old Trafford one-dayer. We didn’t want to overburden you yesterday - our slightly addled hero worship seemed sufficient match analysis for one day.

James Anderson bowled really well. Probably better than Stuart Broad. Anderson v Tendulkar is turning into an excellent mini-battle where top drawer bowling is countered by top drawer batting and each player seems to spur his opponent to ever greater heights.

At the death, Anderson was carved for an almighty four by Zaheer Khan. We noticed Anderson smiling about this, which seemed weird. Next ball he slipped in the slower ball and Zaheer Khan skied it. James Anderson appears supremely confident at the moment and it’s justified.

Tags: England, James Anderson by King Cricket
3 Comments »