Oh Jimmy, Jimmy
Getting Bichel'd and becoming a world beater
I read Jon’s piece with interest over the weekend, particularly the bit about the cricketers he has most written about, the ‘characters’ that for some reason or other keep drawing him in, tempting him to dip his quill once more. I started to think about who I have dedicated the most copy to over the past few years and it turns out it was some guy called… James Anderson.
My parents finally capitulated and got a Sky subscription for my three older brothers and I in 2003. Weaned on Test Match Special during long car journeys and taping late night highlights off the television through the 90s and early noughties, we brattily implored/demanded/whined until mum and dad eventually capitulated and the Wallace’s went satellite. The murky cheque to Murdoch written in time for us to be able to watch Nasser Hussain’s men do battle in the 2003 Cricket World Cup.
An abiding memory of watching England during that tournament is of a callow and wiry (when was Jimmy ever not wiry?) Anderson sporting his frosted tips whilst demolishing Pakistan’s top order. Here was a shy lad not much older than my eldest brother swinging it large and cutting the big boys down to size on the world stage. Saeed Anwar, Inzamam, Mohammad Yousuf and Rashid Latif pocketed, Anderson took 4-29 and was awarded player of the match - England winning the game by 112 runs. I remember the almost paternal pride that seemed to flow towards Jimmy from Hussain and the other elder statesman of that side, Alec Stewart, Craig White… even Andy Caddick.
A few days later England played Australia.
Andy Bichel, all stocky shoulders and gnarled Aussie aggression popped up to take 7-20 as England spluttered to 204-8 off their 50 overs (Imagine what the modern IPL fan would make of that run rate.) Now, I’m sure Andy Bichel is a lovely bloke, but that day he appeared to my teenage eyes as the epitome of everything that was to be feared and loathed about Australia. Bichel had been selected in place of the injured Jason Gillespie but with his craggy features and alpha sheer bloody relentlessness there was a griping familiarity to the way he obliterated England’s batting card. Cushions were hurled and collective groans emitted from our front room as Bichel celebrated another wicket with a leap and a wristband-ed fist pump. For some reason I really remember the vein in his neck, wide and throbbing like an LA highway, no doubt coursing with green and yella blood.
Remembering that England’s victories over Australia in any format during this period were generally rarer than a Frenchman’s onglet, it was with giddy delight that we watched en famille as the Aussies were reduced to 114-7 and then 135-8. England were on the cusp of a famous win.
Then Michael Bevan did what Michael Bevan was famous for doing, grasping the run chase and taking the game down to the wire. Andy Bichel did his bit too, they might have only mentioned it once but I remember the commentators basically saying, “don’t worry about this guy with the bat - he gets hundreds for fun for Queensland and Worcestershire”… something to that effect anyway. With each run scored and over ticked off the confidence drained from Hussain’s men and the Wallace living room.
With thirteen runs needed from the last two overs and with Andrew Flintoff lined up to take the death over on, Nasser turned to his young buck - James Anderson - over the age and experience of Andrew Caddick. It was a lot to ask of a twenty year old kid with only a few games under his belt but Hussain felt Anderson was up to the task and had the skills to polish Australia off. Bichel took his chance. Sensing young blood in the water, he launched a length delivery from Anderson into the electronic scorecard at cow corner for six and then bunted a full delivery down the ground for four. All of a sudden the jig was up. Australia wound up winners with two balls to spare.
It was a galling loss and seemed particularly brutal on a young Anderson. Perhaps because he resembled my eldest brother in age and appearance (my bro favouring the heavily hair gelled fringe rather than frosted tip look around this time) I remember my mum taking the defeat particularly hard. Young Jimmy had his feet held to the fire and ended up immolated at the hands of Bichel and Australia, it must’ve tugged at her maternal instincts. Turns out she wasn’t alone.
Speaking on this week’s Sky Cricket Podcast, Hussain recalled not only that Caddick didn’t speak to him afterwards but that he felt so bad for putting Anderson in that position that he sought him out after the match to apologise. Jimmy was licking his wounds by playing a game or two of pool with Ian Blackwell.
“I went over to say, look Jim, sorry I stuffed you a bit there, as your captain I apologise.” Jimmy’s reaction perhaps gives a glimpse into the bowler that he would become." Hussain explaining that, “He just looked at me with no interest at all and sort of just potted the black as if to say ‘why have you bothered to find me to tell me that? It was my fault’.”
Twenty tears later I was up visiting my parents and found myself in the front room - the same room that we watched the Bichel game - but now under orders to write a piece about Jimmy’s longevity. Tasked with trying to capture a two decade long career in just a few hundred words with a looming deadline. Pretty much an impossible task. Pretentiously channeling the second person narrative of Jay McInerney’s cult classic Bright Lights Big City and ripping off Jon’s own Being Geoffrey Boycott (he’s used to it by now) I gave it a whirl.
You don’t think about the years you’ve spent honing your craft. The feel of the ball in your hand. Your cocked wrist, the seam resting in your fingers. The feeling as you release the ball from their tips, sometimes gently like a conjuror revealing a dove, sometimes pronounced, sometimes with a knowing tweak, a flourish, twisting a key in a lock or deadheading a rose.
You don’t think about how much it hurts, of course it hurts. You are
3941 years old, it’s not easy and you wouldn’t want it to be. You take pleasure in the pain. That moment in the morning when you wake and you are dog-tired. Your body humming with a dull ache, you almost find it comforting.
On it went…
You can vaguely hear the crowd, the “Oh, Jimmy Jimmy” leading into a mournful trill of Jerusalem. You set off. Short steps into big strides. The wind in your hair, flecked with grey now rather than peroxide. The breeze at the back of your slight but muscular shoulders. A blur of greens, creams and the crowd swirl into a colour palette at the peripheries as your vision begins to focus like the rifling on a gun.
Your eyes are loosely fixed on the batter, the crease line, top of off stump. Your body is in motion and your mind is completely free. You don’t think about anything. You arrive at the crease, enter your gather, your action. You do think about lifting your final finger from the seam and you let go.
Your head dips, as it always has with the exertion. For a split-second you lose the ball as the turf comes into view, you raise your head back, recalibrate, home in on the flight of the ball that you’ve just delivered.
You’re Jimmy Anderson. You bowl. It’s what you do.
But not for much longer. We know now that Anderson will hang up his boots for the final time - internationally at least - after the Lord’s Test against the West Indies in July. A whole generation of cricket fans will not have known the cricketing landscape without him.
At a wedding over the weekend I overheard two separate groups of people talking about Anderson’s retirement and how they wanted to be at Lord’s for his grand farewell. Good luck with that… But wedding small talk? That’s the sort of cut through that cricket in this country rarely achieves. A measure of Anderson’s impact and longevity.
There’ll be plenty more words written yet. Perhaps even Jon will be drawn in…
In the three years I spent watching England overseas, losing that day in PE to Australia, so soon after a ritualistic Ashes hammering, may have been the toughest and it still brings back a bit of psychological pain. And if you think about 2001-2003 there's a fair few bad days to put it against. I mean, Andy fuckin' Bichel...Cape Town and Pakistan, though, that was something else. So long ago now. He really is the best, isn't he?