Anderson could be the most significant IPL signing since Shane Warne

Like everybody else, cricket writers are allowed to have heroes too. Over the years there has been something both heroic and minimalist about Jimmy Anderson that I have found fascinating. Skill in a person who finished with 704 Test wickets, more than any other fast bowler, is a given. The aggression often appeared put on, and in fact was honed through sessions with a psychologist.

There have been few sights more rewarding than watching Anderson bowl. He lacked the ferocity of the great West Indies fast bowlers. Nor did he have the metronomic efficiency of Glenn McGrath where evenness meant everything.

Anderson had grace and elegance, and remarkable control over swing, effective even in Indian conditions. He said he learnt reverse swing from Zaheer Khan, and once admitted when commentators praised his wobble swing bowling that he was unsure which way the ball would go. Top sportsmen don’t make such confessions. It was refreshing.

Dual role

And now here he comes, all of 43 next year, to prove that he still has it in him despite not playing T20 cricket for over a decade. Mahendra Singh Dhoni is a year older, so Anderson will not be the oldest in the IPL. Whichever franchise chooses him will know he plays a dual role, as performer and inspiration.

Anderson could be the most significant IPL signing since Shane Warne was picked by Rajasthan Royals to play, lead, and mentor and had such a profound impact on the team, on the players, perhaps on the format itself. Warne was 39 in that inaugural season Rajasthan Royals won, and had retired from international cricket two years earlier.

Sharing a dressing room and even competition time with someone like Anderson means that certain skills and attitudes will be absorbed by those around him if not consciously then through a process of cricketing osmosis.

Obsessed

After over two decades of international cricket, some more cricket may not be what the doctor ordered. But you cannot but admire a man so obsessed with the sport that he will play on and on. When he is done with professional cricket, he will continue to play for his club Burnley, and when that chapter ends, he will play pick-up games in the park and bowl to his grandchildren in his garden, maybe even give his great grand children throwdowns in the dining room at home.

I have known only one international cricketer like that — Shivnarine Chanderpaul of the West Indies. I met him in the US where he was on vacation, playing cricket! “So you play cricket professionally, and then when you want a break, you play some more cricket?” I asked him. “Yes,” he answered simply.

Anderson’s first autobiography was titled: Bowl. Sleep. Repeat. Someone made the point that since Anderson probably bowls in his sleep too, that title had one word too many.

In his recent book Finding the Edge, Anderson describes how he walked into a Manchester hotel to meet the trio of captain, coach and England cricket supremo: “As I walk towards them, it hits me cold. This isn’t a team appraisal, is it? With each footstep towards the far side of the bar, each of their distinct silhouettes coming into view, the tram journey just gone is suddenly like a blissful past life, the outdoor sun sucked into a horizonless neon-red darkness.”

He says later: “My brain is doing the maths and my heart is sinking as I go to shake their hands. I feel like Joe Pesci in Goodfellas, ushered into a room under the impression that I’m going to get made, only to be shot. You f——. They’re going to tell me something I don’t want to be told, aren’t they? Something I’ve been swerving, darting, shapeshifting, bowling through for my whole life.”

That gives us a clue to Anderson’s motives. This smoothest of fast bowlers who seems to run up, bowl, bend, field tell the batter off, walk back and start again, all in one motion is merely playing himself. He is told to retire, does so, writes a book, and prepares to play a format he has shunned, all in one motion.

As Joe Pesci said in With Honors, “A winner forgets he’s in a race, he just loves to run.”