James Anderson bowls reverse swing

If you’ve only seen the scorecard, you might not believe us on this one, but James Anderson bowled brilliantly in this match – particularly when you consider that he was suffering from the wild shits for the whole of one day’s play.

He’s bowled well all series, in fact, in conditions which haven’t helped anyone. He’s swung the new ball, like he always does, but now he reverse swings the ball with the best of them as well. Not many bowlers swing the new ball both in and out, not many bowlers bowl reverse swing and even fewer reverse swing it both ways. James Anderson can do the lot.

More than this, he’s one of the few bowlers who looks like he can formulate plans and then execute them. He puts the ball where he wants and swings it how he wants. England dropped him for the first Test, which was moronic, but by the end of the series, he was the bowler they were throwing the ball to when they needed wickets.

The only delivery we’d like to see more is his yorker. When the ball reverse swings, he beats the bat a hell of a lot and might want to think about aiming at the stumps a bit more. Waqar Younis took most of his wickets like this because Waqar’s inswinging yorker was the best delivery there’s ever been.