James Anderson takes four wickets in final Test, including Joshua Da Silva with an absolute jaffa; England now heading in new direction as they prepare for 2025/26 Ashes; Anderson will be bowling mentor for at least rest of summer but should he still be in the playing XI?
Saturday 13 July 2024 14:01, UK
It probably ended exactly how James Anderson would have wished.
His last Test, his 188th Test, was always going to be about him. There was no escaping that, however much he may have wanted to.
Anderson's retirement turned what would otherwise have been just another match into must-see material.
But as a man who hates the limelight, a bowler as shy as he is skilful and one who places far greater importance on team wins than individual milestones (of which he has oodles), the Lord's fixture against West Indies concluded perfectly.
England ran out thumping victors, Anderson did his bit by striking four times in the game to finish with 704 Test scalps in total - making the small contribution he had been targeting beforehand - and Gus Atkinson bagged the winning wicket to end with 12 on debut and the Player of the Match medal.
Anderson came so close to clinching England's win himself and signing off with a wicket off his last ball, just as great mate Stuart Broad had done in The Ashes last summer, only to shell Gudakesh Motie off his own bowling with West Indies nine down.
As fielding is also among his lengthy list of cricketing attributes, it really was a shock drop. But Anderson's blemish at least allowed Atkinson to experience that feeling of securing victory for England. Anderson was one of the first to congratulate him.
The guy that has spearheaded the attack for most of the last two decades saluted the guy that could form a key part of it in the future. A future Anderson is disappointed he will not be part of himself, with this retirement very much an enforced one.
"I haven't really got a choice!" said the 41-year-old before the game when asked whether he was being eased out too soon.
Test coach Brendon McCullum, captain Ben Stokes and managing director Rob Key made the call to put the most prolific seam bowler in history out to pasture as they build for the 2025/26 away Ashes. The focus now is on younger, faster quicks.
The question is whether they have made that decision too soon.
Speaking ahead of the Lord's Test, Sky Sports' Nasser Hussain said: "England have to balance looking ahead to Australia, which every England captain and every England team is judged on, but also paying due diligence to what's in front of you.
"I think it is the right thing [to move on from Anderson] but he is still bowling seriously well and I might have done it at the end of the summer. It would have been nice for him to end at Old Trafford maybe but it is going to be Lord's where it all started."
Anderson's Test career did indeed begin at the 'Home of Cricket', some 21 years ago when he nailed Zimbabwe opener Mark Vermeulen's off stump en route to a five-wicket haul. At one point at Lord's on Friday morning, you felt it might finish in similar style.
When Anderson dismissed Joshua Da Silva with a magic delivery - one that angled in and then curled away late to graze the edge - he had three for the innings and three more to target, only for Atkinson to claim each of those three and deny the retiring great a 33rd five-for of his Test tenure and an eighth at Lord's alone.
What it could not stop, however, was the feeling of how much Anderson will be missed. Not just because he has been great but also because he perhaps still can be.
We were not treated to vintage Anderson in West Indies' first innings, when arguably he bowled a little short, either an error on his part or because he readjusted due to a lack of swing, but plenty of the old tricks came out of the box in the second.
He had the ball on a string, bending it this way and that, removing Kraigg Brathwaite for the eighth time in Tests with a devilish nip-backer and forcing Alick Athanaze to snick behind as he got a delivery to straighten. It was a spellbinding and economical spell.
Then came that golden ball the next morning to account for Da Silva. A perfect way to take your final Test wicket.
Better than a tame caught-and-bowled, eh, Jimmy?!
Anderson is not going far. He is not even leaving the dressing room.
He will take up a role as bowling mentor for the rest of the summer, passing on his wisdom to the next generation.
There may be times if it is cold and damp - and the way British summers tend to turn out, that is a distinct possibility - that it will feel like a Jimmy Anderson morning. Opposition batters, principally Brathwaite, will be delighted that will not be the case.
Anderson will still be involved, though - who knows, maybe even at the next Ashes if his mentorship role extends that far - and is embracing his move from cricketer to coach.
"I felt my job at the backend of my career was to pass on knowledge and make young guys who come into the group feel comfortable, confident and perform at their best.
"I think that's what you need at this level from a bowling coach. My job is to be there as a shoulder if they need me. I am not going to say, 'bowl like this, bowl like that'.
"I have experience of certain conditions, ways of bowling and fields to set that I can pass on. I also feel I have studied the game enough.
"I have really invested in the technical side and taken time to get to know other people's actions so that when you are on the field if something is not feeling right, you can help them out. I am really looking forward to it. It is going to be an exciting challenge."
With Atkinson - who may now end up taking the new ball - Matthew Potts and the as-yet-uncapped Dillon Pennington in the current squad, there is plenty of promise for Anderson to work with.
Perhaps that will even stretch to Ollie Robinson in time, if the talented but frustrating Sussex seamer can get his act together.
England appear to have moved on from him, at least in the short term, after continued fitness issues - if only he had Anderson's durability - but with this rebuild focused on The Ashes, and Robinson's height and bounce potentially key attributes in Australia, maybe there is a way back.
There looks no way back for Anderson as a player and like Sir Alastair Cook in 2018 and Broad in 2023, he leaves with the thanks of a nation.
But there is also that nagging feeling he had more to give before it came to an end. The reluctant star is also a reluctant retiree.
Watch day one of the second Test between England and West Indies, from Trent Bridge in Nottingham, live on Sky Sports Cricket from 10am on Thursday (first ball to be bowled at 11am).
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