James Anderson will hang up his boots after a career that has, before his farewell game at Lord's, seen him play 187 Tests and take 700 wickets – the most by a pace bowler.
James Anderson will hang up his boots after a career that has, before his farewell game at Lord's, seen him play 187 Tests and take 700 wickets – the most by a pace bowler.
To add to that, Anderson has also taken 32 five-wicket hauls, bowled 39,877 deliveries – another fast bowling record – and even scored a fifty against India, the only time he has crossed the mark in over 600 professional games across formats.
Anderson will, fittingly, play the last of his 188 Tests at Lord's, the place where it all began, all the way back in 2003. Here is a list of players with the longest Test careers.
Sachin Tendulkar – 200 Tests
The only player to score 50 Test hundreds is also the only player to play 200 Tests, Tendulkar carried the Indian batting on his back in the 1990s after debuting at 16 and built an impenetrable legacy in the 2000s as the best batter of one of India's greatest ever Test batting lineups. The Little Master might have retired in 2013, but his legacy continues to endure over a decade after he played his final Test in front of an adoring public in his home city of Mumbai.
James Anderson – 188 Tests
What else can be said about Burnley's Anderson that hasn't been already? Not only is he England's leading wicket-taker, but he has only gotten better as his career has gone on. There has never been a better fast bowler at 41. Even though he will play his final Test later this week, he is more than capable of playing for another year or two if Ben Stokes and Brendon McCullum wanted him to – for that is how enigmatic and abiding the careers of one of red-ball cricket's all-time-greats has been.
Ricky Ponting – 168 Tests
Ponting, Australia's highest-ever run-scorer, had a colossal Test career that spanned 17 years. He scored 13,378 runs, the second-most in history. By the time he strolled out for his final Test, he had already racked up 41 centuries and had made the pull shot his own.
Steve Waugh – 168 Tests
From one Australian batting great to another. Over the course of his 19-year career that started at the MCG in 1985, Waugh played a role as significant as anyone else’s in building Australia into the ruthless side that it has come to be known as today. He scored over ten thousand runs and 32 centuries and, mostly in his early days, took 92 wickets. Yet, even these terrific numbers don't do justice to the impact Waugh has made on Australian cricket.
Stuart Broad – 167 Tests
Broad, Anderson's partner in crime for years, was one-half of the most watchable red-ball pairing of the 21st century. He took 604 wickets in a 16-year-long career that only came to an end last year against Australia at The Oval. England won that game, and Broad took the final wicket in a fitting end to his career, against the team he took over a quarter of his Test wickets the iconic 8-15 at Trent Bridge in 2015.
The others who make up the top ten:
Jacques Kallis – 166 Tests
Shivnarine Chanderpaul – 164 Tests
Rahul Dravid – 164 Tests
Alastair Cook – 161 Tests
Allan Border – 156 Tests
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