Anderson and Broad: cricket’s superstar pair
There must have been a fair number of cricket lovers who, during the lockdown, found themselves muttering Francis Thompson’s evocative lines: “the run-stealers flicker to and fro – O my Hornby and my Barlow long ago.”
The names, Hornby and Barlow, may mean little or nothing to most of us. These heroes of the poet’s youth were Lancashire men who played in the 1870s and 80s. Both also played for England and each opened on occasion with W G Grace. I knew a little about Hornby who captained Lancashire and also played rugby for England, but I was surprised when I checked in Wisden, “the bible of cricket”, to learn that Barlow played more Tests, more successfully than Hornby. No matter: thanks to Francis Thompson their names are enduringly linked, perhaps the first of England’s famous pairs.
The list of such pairings is a long one. Many could doubtless add others to the names that follow; Hirst and Rhodes, Fry and Ranji, Hobbs and Sutcliffe, Larwood and Voce, Hutton and Washbrook; Edrich and Compton, Laker and Lock, Trueman and Statham. Fewer come to mind in more recent times, though 2005 might give us Strauss and Trescothick as batsmen, Harmison and Hoggard as opening bowlers. But these don’t quite have the same ring as the earlier pairings. One might think this is because it is still too soon for nostalgia to have set in, but for the fact that in Anderson and Broad we now have a pairing to match, and statistically, surpass any previous bowling one.
Their figures don’t need rehearsing and will probably have changed by the end of the Test in play. Comparisons with the past are interesting but irrelevant. So much more Test cricket is now played that the stars of today are bound to have scored more runs or taken more wickets than the stars of the past. Jimmy Anderson has played twice as many Tests as Fred Trueman. Trueman was the first bowler to take 300 Test wickets, a figure now surpassed by many. When he took his 300th an interviewer asked him if he thought anyone would ever take more? “I don’t know,” he replied, “but he’ll be bloody tired if he does.”
Anderson and Broad have a right to be that, Anderson especially at thirty-eight, first having played Test cricket in 2003. Pakistan have a speedster in this match who was only four months old when Anderson first played for England.
If I write more about Anderson than Broad now, it’s because he has arrived at that testing time when people are watching for shadows creeping across the field. Careers in all sport follow a pattern. In early days players are judged performance by performance and a few failures may see them discarded. We all know about “one-cap wonders” who fall away quite quickly when early sparkle dims and they don’t repeat a brilliant beginning. If they survive and flourish, a period of indulgence follows. We accept that a player may have a bad session, a bad match, even a poor series. “Form,” we say, “is temporary; class is permanent.” The cream, as the great Scottish rugby coach Jim Telfer liked to say, “rises to the top.” But there comes a time when judgement is sharper again. A few failures with the bat and the player is said to be over the hill. A bad day with the ball and his ability and future are called in question.
Anderson has arrived at this stage. He took fewer wickets than either Broad or Chris Woakes in the Third Test against the West Indies. That he was still often beating the bat and had a catch dropped by Stokes in the slips was scarcely remarked on. Then, after lunch on Wednesday this week against Pakistan, he bowled three poor overs in the afternoon and social media was calling “time up” on him. Other past sessions in his career when his bowling hasn’t been at its best was forgotten. As was, his performance that morning.
The margins between success and failure are often razor-thin for both batsmen and bowlers. Sometimes a ball just takes the edge of the bat and it is a triumph; sometimes it just misses and that is a dot in the scorebook. You can bowl a beauty and get nothing, then a long-hop which the batsman obligingly mishits gives a catch to a fielder. Lots of good balls don’t take wickets and lots of bad ones do. Not all bowlers are as honest as Derek Underwood who said that eight times out of ten you take a wicket not because you’ve bowled a great ball, but because the batsman has made a mistake.
At the age of thirty-eight Anderson is in the evening of his career. He may still be among the cleverest of pace bowlers but there are signs that he is more susceptible to injury and that his body is taking longer to recover from his exertions. But he is still moving the ball late. He is still beating the bat. As long as he is doing that few batsmen will be happy to face him.
Stuart Broad is in a different place. He has bowled better over the last eighteenth months than at any time in his career. But he can, of course, have poor spells too- as all bowlers do when the wickets don’t come. The difference is that people will grant him a little more indulgence than they are ready to grant Anderson now, simply because he is four years younger.
All sportsmen can go quickly, and it is sad to see when they do. Sometimes, however, it’s perception rather than the reality of decline that does for them. Brian Statham took 5 for 40 against South Africa in August 1965, yet never played for England again.
What may count against Anderson now is less an evident decline than the fact that the competition among pace bowlers is stiffer now than it has been for many years. It will be easier for selectors to think he can be replaced.
Be that as it may, the bowling partnership of Anderson and Broad has been astonishing: almost 1100 Test wickets between them. No matter how or when their careers end, they are already among those immortal in memory’s lane. When they have been on song it’s back to the pavilion that the run-stealers have flickered. In thirty, forty, fifty years, men and women will be sighing “but you should have seen our Anderson and Broad long ago.”