The question of a sportsman’s longevity: is it a testament to science or to self?
Sports stars tend to peak at different ages, some only for a short time. Around a decade ago, James Anderson was recognised as a very good bowler. Now, at the age of thirty-eight, he is recognised as a great one. Only three bowlers have taken more Test wickets than he has, and all were spinners. Anderson is likely to surpass the third of these, India’s Anil Kumble, very soon, possibly even in his next match. He partly attributes his longevity at the game’s top level to the sports science and the nutritionists that now advise players.
More to the point perhaps is that Anderson has an easy natural style which puts less stress on his body than is the case with many fast bowlers. For perspective, many fast bowlers have bowed out long before reaching Anderson’s age. Exceptions are few and far between. The great Australian, Ray Lindwall, was thirty-nine when he played his last Test but had a shorter career than Anderson. Lindwall was twenty-six when he played his first Test, the outbreak of WW2 delayed his debut. By the end of his career, he was good rather than great and was no longer the Australian attack’s spearhead.
However, Anderson has a lighter workload in an English summer than many of his predecessors, despite many more tests. The introduction of central contracts for England’s Test players means that he plays almost no county cricket and now doesn’t feature in England’s one-day and T20 teams. In first-class cricket, Fred Trueman bowled just short of 100,000 balls; Anderson had bowled just a little more than half as many -51,224 at the latest count. Trueman’s Test career ended when he was thirty-four; nobody would now be surprised if Anderson is still taking wickets for England when he is forty.
It’s clear that medical advances, sports scientist and nutrition experts play a significant role in a sportsman’s longevity. Take Roger Federer for example; the noble sportsman will turn forty this year. Federer’s recovery from an operation means he missed much of the last season and is missing the Australian Championship now being played. But he has no intention of retiring yet (tennis players used to peak in their late twenties) and will be at Wimbledon this upcoming summer. Federer won his first Wimbledon in 2003, the year that Anderson played his first Test. Rafa Nadal and Nolan Djokovic are now in their mid-thirties. Of course, there are exceptions; Ken Rosewall won his last Grand Slam at the age Federer is now. The surgeon’s skill has kept Federer and Nadal at the top of the game. Andy Murray may never get back to his best, but he wouldn’t’ be playing at all if his surgeon hadn’t provided him with a metal hip.
When the Rugby Union permitted professionalism in the mid-1990s, many assumed that the greater intensity would shorten careers. The opposite has happened. Wales will be led out at Murrayfield today by Alun Wyn Jones who is thirty six; a veteran of three Lions tours, and still likely to be in Warren Gatland’s squad if this summer’s tour goes ahead. Ireland’s captain, Johnny Sexton is a few months younger but has set his sights on the World Cup in 2023. Again longevity owes much to the medics. Injuries which used to end careers are now repaired. The average age of an international side is two or three years higher than in the amateur days. This is partly due to the demands of work and a career outside the game often means that even internationalists retired before they were thirty. Once more, there were always some exceptions.
French prop Alfred Roques was one of the most remarkable cases. He didn’t play rugby until he was in his mid-twenties and he was first capped at the age of thirty-three. Roques played for France until he was thirty eight, a member of a team which won three or four Five Nationa titles. I doubt Roques ever sought advice from a nutritionist.
If some prolong their careers with healthy eating, others – notably jockeys – do so by self-denial to keep their weight down.
If Lester Piggott had eaten what most of us consider an adequate amount of food, his natural weight would have made a career as a flat race jockey impossible. He might have won his first Derby – on Never Say Die in 1954 when he was only eighteen – but that would have been his lot. Instead on a diet that might just have seemed adequate for a Pekinese, he rode Classics winners into his fifties, staving off hunger with the help of Havana cigars, his career a triumph of mind over matter.
Having willpower and putting mind over matter is the key to what makes sporting longevity possible. S F Barnes is a perfect example of this, regarded by his contemporaries as the greatest of all bowlers. A difficult, self-willed, man; he played little first-class cricket. Although, in his twenty seven Tests – all against either Australia or South Africa – he took 189 wickets at a little over 16 runs at a time. After falling out with Lancashire (partly because they refused to offer any winter payments) returned to League and Minor Counties cricket for his native Staffordshire. Here, he was employed by the County Council, drawing up legal documents in a beautiful copperplate handwriting.
In Barnes’ last season of League cricket in 1938, he took more than a hundred wickets at an average of 6.94. He was then sixty five. Ten years previously, he played his last first-class matches, against the touring West Indians in 1928 and the South African the following year. Both thought him the best bowler they had met with on their tour of England – this at a time when England could call on Maurice Tate and Harold Larwood.
Barnes was an awkward customer, no doubt about that. He so infuriated Archie McLaren – the captain of Lancashire and England and the man who had plucked him from League cricket to tour Australia- that once in a storm at sea, McLaren reputedly said, “one comfort if we drown – that bugger Barnes will drown with us..”
Well, I don’t suppose that anyone would say anything comparable about Jimmy Anderson, now the most revered man in English cricket. But, Anderson too has made himself into a very great bowler, in-part by Barnes’ will-power, in part again by Barnes’ care of his body; and most of all, by Barnes’ strength of character. These surely are the qualities that make for enduring success and longevity in the challenging, and often unforgiving, sporting arena.