A while back, in an attempt to preserve his sanity amid the deluge of swill and slander that populates his social media feeds, Jimmy Anderson decided to take advantage of the Twitter function that allows users to mute certain words and phrases. The list of banned terms provides a surprisingly acute insight into the psyche of a bowler who, on some level, has played his entire career against the background noise of doubt and scepticism, judgement and extrapolation.
“Australia” is one of the words Anderson has purged from his timeline. “Kohli” is another. Also: “injury”, “injured”, “done” and “finished”. “Reverse sweep” got muted after Indian fans gleefully celebrated Rishabh Pant swiping him for four in Ahmedabad a couple of years ago. If you tweet the phrase “worse than Steyn”, Anderson will not see it. And then there are the words that have followed England’s greatest fast bowler around like a plague of locusts: “cloud”, “clouds”, “Clouderson”.
