If you scroll down Jimmy Anderson’s Instagram page, it is hard not to notice that he is a man in fine physical fettle. Among the de rigueur golf days and regular gym sessions there are shots of Anderson on a windswept beach, running and stuff, looking healthy and flogging vitamin supplements.
It’s almost as if Big Vita want you to think that you, too – yes you in your crumb-flecked joggers, you with your lapsed gym membership, your lame excuses, your two KitKat Chunkies in front of MasterChef of an evening – you could be as lithe and lean as Jimmy if only you popped down a 2mg pill of first-pressing cod livers each day. Well, yeah right, dream on. Anderson is 39 years old and in phenomenal nick. He has spent more than half of his life as a professional sportsman, training, nutritioning, focused and committed to his goal. That 20 years of graft has seen him become England’s all-time record wicket-taker in Test cricket. You took the bins out last night, big whoop.
Anderson shared his latest photo on Monday, some fresh content for his 746,000 followers. The post shows his first squad photo for Lancashire, a cherubic, frosted-tipped youth in 2002, his boyish good looks enough to get him into any early 00s pop band.
In the second photo, his most recent Lancashire squad picture snapped a few days ago, his stubble has spread and is greying at the chin and there are more laughter lines, but, if anything the Jimmy of 2022 looks in even better condition than the Jimmy of two decades previous. “The highlights are now greys but the enthusiasm is the same. Can’t wait to get going,” he writes.
Anderson will no doubt feel a little different at the start of this county season. For the first time he will be genuinely unsure as to whether he has played his final Test for England. Part of him must be preparing for the possibility that it’s all over. While a proud Lancastrian who enjoys representing his county whenever he can, for the past 15 years Anderson’s run-outs for the Red Rose have largely been an exercise in returning to, maintaining or proving his fitness for England. Uphill spells into the wind at Southport in September will surely feel different if they aren’t part of some bigger picture.
There are those who think the way Anderson has been treated by his England and Wales Cricket Board employers is a kick in his well-aligned teeth. That it is a travesty after all he has given for English cricket for it to end like this, with a squib rather than a spectacle. Some think he should be allowed to go out on his own terms, that he has earned that right. Others, with a cold glint in the eye, know sport doesn’t really work like that.
As any fan of any sports team of any standard will know, sport doesn’t give a toss about your feelings. Couldn’t give a fig for sentimentality. It’s little wonder that when it comes to sporting sign-offs, only a sparse few get to curate their own final bow.
Cricket is no different. For every Nasser Hussain creaming his final ball in Test cricket to the Lord’s boundary to secure a thrilling win there is a Kevin Pietersen, whose final act in the format was to make scores of three and six at Sydney in the Ashes drubbing of 2013-14. Eight years and seemingly a lifetime since his thrilling debut in 2005, KP was duly dropped for looking “disengaged”, in the words of Paul Downton, then managing director of England cricket. Despite his best efforts, Pietersen never played for England again.
For every career that ends in a teammate shoulder hoist and a valedictory ground lap there is one that ends in a tearful press conference or more latterly a rueful tweet. Even the great Don Bradman suffered at the hands of the game’s icy disdain for sentiment, famously bowled for a duck at the Oval in 1948 by Eric Hollies after a final, perhaps tearful walk to the crease.
Andrew Strauss, the man who dealt Anderson his current predicament in a well-documented (if only in duration) five-minute phone call is no stranger to anticlimactic endings. His final Test in 2012 was overshadowed by the fallout from Pietersen (that man again) texting his mates in the South Africa dressing room.
Fitting finales and heartfelt swansongs are as much about the fans in the crowd and supporters sitting at home as they are for those on the pitch. To give the sporting public the opportunity to say thank you and goodbye, to give the punters a sense of closure. You can imagine Anderson, shy and famously – if knowingly – curmudgeonly off the field, enjoying the spectacle of an emotional, potentially mawkish or overblown goodbye far less than say, Stuart Broad.
Anderson may yet play for England again, as early as the first Test of the summer against New Zealand, starting on 2 June at Lord’s. He certainly made it clear in interviews this week that he doesn’t feel done yet. A final and fitting bow may yet be in store.
He is clearly as photogenic and as fit or fitter as he was at the start of his career, the years have been kind in that regard. But sport isn’t always as kind and certainly isn’t scripted. An experienced campaigner of more than 20 years, Anderson will well know this. And it will no doubt be adding to his sense of early-season unease.
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