Mining for Gold: Is James Anderson England's greatest-ever bowler?

A bowling average is a rare example of something you want to ratchet down rather than up. James Anderson spent most of his career straining to improve an average which, going into the summer of 2010, sat at 35 after 46 Tests. It eventually dropped below 30 during his greatest performance, the Homeric 10-for against Australia at Trent Bridge in 2013, and sits at 26.52 going into his final Test.

The more literal stats perverts will dismiss Anderson’s case to be England’s best bowler simply because his average is very good rather than great. It puts him in the same ballpark as some very fine quick bowlers: Andy Roberts, John Snow, Shoaib Akhtar. But that lot didn’t take 700 Test wickets between them.

Anderson’s greatness lies in his artistry and his longevity; his skill and his scale. Longevity is the easiest thing in the world to quantify but one of the hardest to qualify. Sometimes, even cold, hard stats are in the eye of the beholder. Who’s the better bowler, the one with 700 wickets at an average of 26 or the one with 189 at 16?

SF Barnes, he of the 189 wickets at 16, is one of Anderson’s main rivals for the title of England’s greatest bowler. The fact he played his last Test in 1914 makes comparisons unfeasible as well as odious. A better comparison, though still inevitably imperfect, is between England’s top 10 wicket-takers in Tests, which takes us from Alec Bedser’s debut in 1946 to the present day.

Five of England’s top 10 wicket-takers have a lower bowling average than Anderson, though none of them have even half as many Test wickets. We’ll never know to what extent they could have sustained their excellence while doing all those sour metres a second time. All things being equal, Anderson will finish his Test career having bowled over 40,000 deliveries; only three other England players – Stuart Broad, Ian Botham and Derek Underwood – have sent down half as many.

England's top 10 men's Test wicket-takers

Graham Gooch’s batting mantra was, “It’s not how, it’s how many”. With Anderson it was how many and how long. (It was also often ‘how’, but a stats piece probably isn’t the place to explore his artistry.) Anderson’s durability should boggle the mind, but because it has happened imperceptibly, we don’t yet fully appreciate it. It’s even more remarkable because like Richard Hadlee, another tearaway turned surgeon, Anderson’s average kept dropping at an age when most fast bowlers have their feet up and are learning the phrase “in my day”.

It’s one thing to be a late bloomer; another to do it when you already have an outstanding career behind you. When he turned 35, Anderson had taken 480 Tests wickets at an average of 28.10. At that age Bob Willis was about to retire, Fred Trueman was bloody tired and had played his last Test, and Botham was dealing in pantomime on and off the field. Since his 35th birthday, Anderson has taken 220 wickets at 22.86. Only one bowler of any speed, from any country, has taken more since turning 35: Sri Lanka’s left-arm spinner Rangana Herath winkled out 233 of his 433 Test wickets.

England's top 10 wicket-takers in men's Tests after turning 35

One of the main arguments against Anderson’s claim to be England’s all-timer is his lack of match-winning rampages. While most casual fans could immediately give you chapter and verse on Broad, Willis and probably Botham’s career-best figures, Anderson’s don’t live long in the memory: 7-42 against West Indies at Lord’s in 2017. He wasn’t even the Player of the Match – but he was the Player of the Series, a microcosm of his influence.

He was less likely to destroy teams than England’s other greats, particularly Broad, Botham and Underwood (though not, a little surprisingly given Headingley 1981, Willis). In real terms, Anderson was much more likely to be Player of the Series (five times) than Player of the Match (eight). Broad and Botham both won 10 match awards and two series awards. While Broad turned 60 per cent of his five-fors into sixfors, Anderson did it only 19 per cent of the time. In 187 Tests Anderson has taken six six-fors, the same number as Monty Panesar managed in 50, and his percentage of six-fors per innings is lower than, among others, Chris Lewis, John Emburey and Eddie Hemmings.

Most six-wicket+ innings for England in men's Tests

Anderson could still shred a team, and there was nothing more exhilarating than watching him make the ball talk like Brian Blessed, but a greater strength was his impossible consistency: spell on spell, day on day, year on year.

His bowling was subtle and so were his contributions. England’s two greatest series wins of Anderson’s career, in Australia in 2010/11 and India 2012/13, could not have happened without him – yet he didn’t take a five-for in either series. What he did do was take four on those delirious first days at Adelaide and Melbourne, dumping Australia into a hole from which they couldn’t escape, and a pair of three-fors at Eden Gardens two years later when England went 2-1 up. At the end of that series, India’s captain MS Dhoni said Anderson had been the “major difference” between the sides, yet it is remembered for the mighty batting of Alastair Cook and Kevin Pietersen.

Look at the scorecards for England’s best victories of the last 15 years, from Lord’s 2009 to Colombo 2012 to Chennai 2021, and there’s a fair chance Anderson will be hiding in plain sight with a vital three- or four-for to his name.

Anderson may not have bowled as many JFK spells, but his overall record in England victories compares favourably to more celebrated match-winners.

England's leading wicket-takers in men's Test wins

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For the first part of his career Anderson was disparaged as ‘Clouderson’, a man who could only hurt teams when the Dukes ball was swinging. He disproved that so emphatically that by the end of his career he was more effective overseas. Since the start of the 2010/11 Ashes, when he started to prove he was less fair-weather friend and more all-weather champion, he has taken 214 Test wickets at 26.42 overseas. In the last five years of his Test career, Anderson has averaged 28.62 at home and 20.16 abroad. The harder the yakka, the more he relished it.

Anderson’s record abroad, and especially in Asia, sets him apart. His 92 wickets are a record for a touring fast bowler on the subcontinent, shared with Dale Steyn. England’s next best is Matthew Hoggard with 50. Over a third of Anderson’s wickets came after he turned 35. Asia is no continent for old men, not when they bowl fast. Between them, all the other seam bowlers in England’s history have the grand total of one wicket after the age of 35 – and that was taken by Basil D’Oliveira, whose pace was such that he if was around these days he’d probably be known as Basil D’Oliveira.

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Since the start of the 2010/11 Ashes, when Anderson started to prove he was less fair-weather friend and more all-weather champion, he has taken 214 Test wickets at 26.42 overseas. In the last five years of his Test career, Anderson has averaged 28.62 at home and 20.16 abroad. The harder the yakka, the more he relished it.

The biggest blot on Anderson’s statistical appendix is his modest overall record against Australia: 117 wickets at an average of 35.97. There is context and nuance, and he did produce at least one match-winning spell in the Ashes victories of 2009, 2010/11, 2013 and 2015, but he never terrorised them like Broad, Botham, Willis, Bedser and others.

England's leading wicket-takers in men's Tests against Australia

It doesn’t help that he averaged over 80 in his first and last Ashes series. In six series between 2010/11 and 2021 /22 (excluding 2019, when he was injured after four overs) Anderson averaged under 30 on five occasions. The exception was 2013/14, and frankly there’s nothing much to say about that. The raging perfectionist in Anderson will be most frustrated by his average at home to Australia, an unbecoming 38.69.

Botham, though he often bowled brilliantly in Asia, was 28 when he could last tell his mother-in-law he’d taken a wicket there. Willis was 34, though he only took a single wicket on that tour before returning home with food poisoning. Barnes (for obvious reasons) and Trueman never played a Test on the subcontinent. Even Broad, Anderson’s partner in agelessness, took only three wickets in Asia after his 31st birthday. Anderson took 50.

Anderson has instead been defined by his success against the other great team of his era. He holds multiple records against India, not just for England but all countries: most Test wins (17), most Test wickets (149, more than twice the next-best Englishman), most Test wickets in victories (85). He even made his highest Test score, an increasingly surreal 81 in 2014, against them.

It makes sense, given Anderson’s longevity, that he would sit top of so many lists. But this wasn’t a lucky dip or an unfair advantage; he earned every single one of the 39,877 deliveries he has bowled in Test cricket. Even in this age of performative contrarianism, taking 700 Test wickets as a fast bowler brooks few arguments.

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In April 2017, Shane Warne and James Anderson discussed the best batter they have played against for a Sky Sports feature. Warne picked Brian Lara and Sachin Tendulkar; Anderson chose Ricky Ponting and Hashim Amla. Anderson’s head-to-head record against Ponting in Tests wasn’t too bad – four wickets at 58 – although that was mainly because he dismissed the Aussie skipper cheaply three times in 2010/11, when Ponting was past his best. Going into that series, Ponting’s head-to-head average against Anderson was 204.

Amla’s average against Anderson just kept going up. The South African scored 398 runs off Anderson in Tests and was dismissed only twice – and one of those was a freakish grubber. His average is the highest against Anderson, just ahead of the West Indian Ramnaresh Sarwan (190).

The Smiths – Steve and Graeme – were Anderson’s nemeses at different stages of his career. They were two of the three highest run-scorers against him; the other was Shane Watson, often ridiculed by England fans but respected by their opening bowlers.

Most Test runs off Anderson

Sachin Tendulkar was too good to have a nemesis. No bowler dismissed him 10 times in Tests, a remarkable statistic given he played for 24 years. Anderson came closest by picking up Tendulkar nine times at the outstanding strike rate of a wicket every 39 balls. He dismissed Tendulkar with the seventh ball he bowled to him in Tests, at Mumbai in 2006, and then two of the last four during England’s series win seven years later.

At least Tendulkar landed a few blows of his own. There were some top-order batters who had no answer: the current Pakistan Test captain Shan Masood and the Sri Lankan opener Lahiru Thirimanne scored 40 and 39 runs respectively off Anderson. They were both out eight times.

Anderson's most frequent Test victims

Anderson’s most celebrated head-to-head battle was with Virat Kohli. It ended in an honourable draw: 305 runs, seven wickets, average 43.57. Within that, both players had spells of dominance. Kohli couldn’t buy a run in 2014; Anderson didn’t dismiss him in 454 balls between August 2014 and August 2021. This reminds us that stats aren’t gospel and should be taken in context. That run included the 2018 series when Anderson bowled beautifully to Kohli. According to the CricViz database, his Expected Average to Kohli in that series was second only to 2014, when he was all over him like a cheap cliché. Anderson manipulates a cricket ball like nobody else, but not even he can control the fates.

Anderson v Kohli in Tests

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James Anderson’s development as a bowler is such a perfect study in maturity that it feels contrived. He started as a stump-busting pin-up with a red streak in his hair by way of tribute to Freddie Ljungberg. Twenty-one years later he looks more like the star of a Nespresso advert, and his bowling has never been subtler or more understated.

The ball-tracking data in the CricViz database, which begins in 2006, shows that Anderson’s numbers moved in either the right or unavoidable direction in the second half of his career. His pace, which was already averaging below 85mph in the late 2000s, dropped steadily as his accuracy and skill levels rose. As that lavish, stump-busting swing started to fade, Anderson’s seam movement increased. That was for a number of reasons, most notably the wobble ball that he developed with David Saker in 2010.

The most remarkable statistic might be Anderson’s economy rate, which defied the gravity of Test cricket. It was his way of sticking two fingers up at a bat-dominated world. When he conceded 3.04 runs per over in India earlier this year, it was the first time in 20 Test series that he had gone at three an over.

Even after that series, Anderson’s economy rate in the 2020s is 2.42; of those who have taken at least 20 wickets, only Sri Lanka’s Suranga Lakmal has been thriftier. In the same period, his percentage of good-length deliveries is behind only Australia’s Scott Boland. There’s no red streak in Anderson’s hair, literally or figuratively, just a touch of salt and pepper.

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