The final acts of Stuart Broad and James Anderson on an Australian cricket field evoke the departures of another great double act, prompting Phil Walker to wonder what this bowling attack can possibly look like when they are gone for good.
There was a moment here, just before tea, at the fall of Australia’s second wicket – before the contest died with the advent of the unreal Steve Smith – that transported the whimsies among us back to late summer 2000; to a corner of south London, and the quiet departure of two literal giants of the game.
The wicket was David Warner’s. He’d played breezily up until then for fifty-odd, but had lost his fluency with the return of first Stuart Broad, and then James Anderson. In the event it was Anderson who finished what Broad had begun. A gripping off-cutter, delivered with a sudden, almost showboating click of the wrist, encouraging Warner’s prod to be taken low by Jonny Bairstow.
Many have been tried and backed, for such inconclusive returns. Steven Finn was the great white hope, who took 14 wickets in three Tests here in 2010 and nothing out here since – his pre-series injury was unfortunate, but he had not been selected in the original 16; Mark Wood was the golden bullet they can never get on the park; Chris Woakes the hip-swinging Jimmy-apprentice who’s exposed when it’s flat; Jamie Overton bowls a heavy ball at a pace that will never offer more than a containing option; Tom Curran is skilful and game but pedestrian; Jake Ball was picked and quietly sidelined after the Brisbane Test, perhaps due to the Test average of 114; Toby Roland-Jones, who would have played out here but for injury, is already 29 and has played just four Tests… we could go on.
Of that list, Finn is the only one to have taken 100-plus Test wickets, but of his 125 wickets so far (at a decent average of 30 and a very good strike-rate), just five of them have come in the last 18 months. The fact is, the post-Branderson landscape is a shapeless mishmash of Pollockian spatters, and no one has the slightest idea what it’s going to look like.
