The 2023 Ashes is almost here! And you’re not ready! You think you are, but you aren’t. You don’t know what to watch out for. But don’t worry, we’ve done the hard work for you and come up with this list. You need to watch out for these things…

1. Suggestions that this could be as good as the 2005 Ashes

Nope, wrong. Completely and utterly and unavoidably wrong. Even if the actual cricket is higher quality – which is entirely possible – there is simply no way to match the drama because even though you don’t realise it, the story of the 2023 Ashes is already well underway and it isn’t even close to the story of the 2005 Ashes.

No shame in that though. Doesn’t mean it won’t be an amazing Ashes.

2. Ollie Robinson’s wicket celebration

There are many variants of the Ollie Robinson wicket celebration, but the basic framework of it is a kind of upper cut finger point that is punctuated by a “Woo!”

While James Anderson may well be the greatest swing bowler there’s ever been and Stuart Broad routinely shapes Ashes series, Ollie Robinson might actually prove to be England’s most important bowler in the 2023 Ashes. We all talk about Mark Wood’s pace and when Jofra Archer might come back, but Robinson is the one who’s quietly been really very tremendously successful these last couple of years.

The bizarre trick that Robinson has managed to pull off is taking heaps of cheap wickets while simultaneously persuading everyone that his Test career is about to go up in flames at any moment. As just one example, during the last Ashes he struggled with his fitness and was at times reduced to bowling spin and yet still somehow averaged 25.54 across four Tests. Some would argue he sidestepped some punishment by being off the field at times, but quite honestly the evidence suggests the only thing he sidestepped was taking more wickets.

That series began a fitness run that went back spasm, more back spasms, tooth infection, food poisoning, another back thing and then Covid. Then he got back playing cricket a bit more regularly and just carried on taking wickets for next to nothing. He’s played New Zealand, India, Australia, South Africa and Pakistan and he averages 21.27.

3. David Warner being either rubbish or not rubbish at cricket

Do you know that David Warner is secretly rubbish at cricket? Yes, he is. Absolutely true.

At the same time he does always carry that latent threat of being not at all rubbish at cricket. It probably won’t happen, but it would be hugely awful if it did.

4. James Anderson’s opening spell

One day this ends, you know. One day James Anderson decides he doesn’t want to sling it down in a bobble hat in the Old Trafford nets in front of basically no-one any more. And as soon as he thinks that, he’ll pack it all in. Every last bit of it.

Where will that leave us? We’ll tell you where it’ll leave us. It’ll leave us with the long forgotten concept of England opening bowlers wasting the new ball.

It’s amazing to think that younger readers may not even know about wasting the new ball; may not even comprehend that ‘wasting the new ball’ is actually normality. Since the dawn of Test cricket, England opening bowlers have bowled too short or too wide or too short and wide. Some have spiced things up with a bit of legside filth, but short, wide, or short-and-wide are basically the options.

We don’t know how good we have had it these last however many years. He may have wasted the new ball in his youth, but our trust in Jimmy Anderson is complete and justified these days. No ball is truly wasted. Even the wide ones are an exercise in gathering information.

Not only that, but you know that if there is swing available, Anderson will find it. And you also know that if he finds swing, he will use it correctly and to the full. And when there isn’t swing, you can be sure that he will land his wobble ball on the spot. When it comes to bowling in England, Jimmy is the benchmark. That means you don’t ever need to mope about what someone else might have done had they been given the opportunity instead.

James Anderson has been so brilliant for so long that what he does now seems unremarkable. This is why we all need to redouble our efforts to appreciate what he does while we still can.

5. James Anderson losing his rag at something

The other great thing about Jimmy is that he is a quite majestically irritable cricketer. Even after all these years he still really, really, really gives a shit.

6. Travis Head’s head

Averages 47. Gives it a biff. Looks like he’s about to go and smoke some ribs on the grill out back after a long shift pumping gas at the truck stop.

7. England’s openers

Ben Duckett’s had three good months, which makes him just about the most successful England opener since Alastair Cook first began auditioning for Andrew Strauss’s successor all the way back in 2012. Three good months does not a Test batter make however. We’d probably be talking about Duckett’s prospects an awful lot more if his weaknesses weren’t massively overshadowed by those of his opening partner, the Wobbleatron 9000.

Unlike many, we aren’t enraged by Zak Crawley’s continued presence in the England Test team. We aren’t delighted either. We’re just sort of ignorantly and excitedly watching it unfold in front of us, like that time we went to see Event Horizon in the cinema, entirely unaware it was a horror film. What’s happening? Where’s this going? What’s up with his eyes?

8. “Doctored pitches”

Check the series previews. Have England cheated yet? There is literally nothing in cricket funnier and more baffling than the very specific Australian notion of a “normal” pitch and the unshakeable belief that anything that remotely deviates from that must by definition have been tampered with somehow.

Australians will moan about Indian pitches favouring the spinners, but it’s funnier still when they object to English pitches because they’re essentially outraged at being asked to play sport on grass.

9. Ben Stokes’ bowling

Anyone who’s seen The Prestige will know that some tricks are performed at a cost. It feels like every time Ben Stokes bowls an over, another chunk of his cricket career dies.

Stokes is not averse to sacrifice and the Ashes will obviously be a period when he’s willing to erode his body in pursuit of wickets. At the same time he’ll want to get out of bowling whenever possible.

What’s interesting is that this is common knowledge. Both teams know the less bowling Stokes is obliged to do, the more comfortable England will feel continuing to play him as an all-rounder. It’s a bit of a paradox really: the less he’s called on to bowl, the more viable a bowler he remains.

Stokes’ aim, therefore, is to keep overs in the bank. Australia’s goal is for him to fritter them away before the series is out – that way they’ll only have his batting and his captaincy to deal with and England may struggle to balance their side.

Conversely, England’s other all-rounder, Moeen Ali, will want to get through some overs so that he can recover some rhythm after restricting himself to limited overs cricket in recent years.

Australia won’t want Moeen bowling and they will want Stokes bowling. You can see how this might play out.

10. Michael Neser

If you clicked through to the 2005 Ashes article earlier, you’ll know that the defining feature of that series was how Australia turned up quite reasonably assuming that they could demolish England however they chose, having done so in every series throughout the whole of the 1990s and beyond.

Those Aussie sides were able to transcend conditions, but that incredible run of Ashes success began in rather different fashion, in large part thanks to an accurate swing bowler who really made the most of being in the opposite hemisphere.

Terry Alderman took 41 wickets in the 1989 Ashes. There were six Tests, but still… 41 wickets! This wasn’t even his best effort. He’d taken 42 in the 1981 series.

If you’re touring England and you don’t have Shane Warne and Glenn McGrath, you could do worse than turn to a bowler who can swing it like Terry Alderman. Based on his record in county cricket and the big booming arcs that brought him a hat trick against Yorkshire a few weeks back, Michael Neser could be such a man.

Failing that, more recent history suggests that Scott Boland landing it on just one corner of a postage stamp might be the way to go.

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Happy Ashes everyone, unless you’re Australian!

There is undeniably something wrong with James Anderson that he still wants to play this game as much as he so obviously does. Good on him.

As 24-year-old Sam Curran turns his arm over in Mohali before tens of thousands of fans and a TV audience of millions – sweat dripping from every pore, the most expensive player in cricket history – 40-year-old James Anderson slats it down in a bobble hat in the Old Trafford nets in front of basically no-one.

This is no comment on Curran, who must (and should) be having a fine old time in India. It is just an observation that despite how much the cricket world has changed, Anderson is still somehow committed to doing the same things he’s been doing for 20-odd years because he likes how that works out for him.

We remember going down to watch Lancashire one April in the early 2000s, back when words like ‘promising’ and ‘raw’ were being deployed in reference to Anderson. Watching him open the bowling even back then, it felt like a small stage. He’d already developed a nice habit of taking five-fors and it just felt like he should really be playing in front of more people.

Now here we are in 2023 and Jimmy is bowling in the nets in a bloody bobble hat because he’s mad-keen on being at his best for his 180th Test match.

They call it the hard yards and surely they only get harder.

Physically harder is one thing – that’s more easily manageable – but ageing also tends to bring with it diminishing emotional returns when you’re fundamentally repeating the same stuff.

Again, for most of us, that’s manageable. That tendency is what drives us to find and experience new things. You have to work that much harder to find new aspects of old things – particularly when specific elements of those old things maybe aren’t quite so obviously fun the 23rd time around.

Like bowling in a bobble hat in the Old Trafford nets.

Just to contextualise this a bit, have you spotted who’s in the background? That wiry grey-haired old coaching fella?

It’s Graham Onions.

Graham Onions who made his Test debut six years after Anderson. Graham Onions who is in fact two months younger than Anderson.

Graham Onions is still in cricket. Graham Onions is also a bit mad. Maybe if his back permitted, he’d still be bowling too.

We like this reaction after Anderson almost got a ‘wicket’…

… in the nets.

He just can’t help himself.

And nor can we.

Even if your appetite for cricket doesn’t quite match Anderson’s – and it almost certainly doesn’t – you will still be able to recognise the madness that drives him. Whether you’re an England fan or not, James Anderson is one of us.

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Jimmy Anderson has played 179 Test matches and he was completely pissed off to lose this one by a single run. Jimmy Anderson is a quite majestically irritable cricketer.

The penultimate ball of the second Test between New Zealand and England could, and probably technically should, have been called a wide. Nobody at the Basin Reserve in Wellington really wanted the scores to move level with an extra though. Nobody except Jimmy Anderson anyway.

Next ball Anderson was out and honestly, sport’s whole meaning and impact is built on someone involving having and displaying this level of pissed-offedness.

We were struck by a particular moment just after the wicket had been confirmed when the camera focused on a frozen Anderson as the humanity surrounding him ricocheted around in glee.

The players are converging noisily. Fans are literally dancing with joy.

But someone has pressed pause on Jimmy.

The sort of whirling dervish backdrop highlighted this really well, but the contrasts continued.

Here’s Tom Blundell, who took the catch.

Here’s Jimmy.

Here’s The Great Neil Wagner, who bowled the delivery (as well as the previous one).

Even Kane Williamson slipped into not merely having, but actively displaying an emotion, which is not a thing he’s usually very big on.

And here’s Jimmy.

As Anderson repeatedly took the short steps back and forth between sadness and irritation, bedlam and buoyancy swirled around him.

Neil Wagner is most definitely experiencing emotions in this shot and he is not alone.

Even Ben Stokes was at it.

Here’s England’s captain, sauntering onto the pitch at the earliest opportunity, already in “in’t Test cricket brilliant!” mode.

But that’s not the correct way to behave. Grinning at losing a match by a single run because it was brilliant Test cricket actually chips away at the brilliance a little bit.

Sport doesn’t need everyone pulling in the same direction for the same result. It needs conflict. It needs people who want different things pulling in opposite directions. That’s what makes it magical and powerful.

Everyone knows Stokes was pulling in the opposite direction to New Zealand, but smiling immediately at a loss raises a faint shadow of ‘could he maybe have pulled slightly harder?’ Even if that isn’t true, inadvertently raising the question still diminishes things, even if just a smidge.

What you really need in the immediate aftermath of defeat is a goddamn superhero, chuntering away about how the previous delivery should have been given as a wide before descending back into melancholy.

Chuntering to the umpire? Chuntering to his batting partner? Chuntering to himself? To the void?

It doesn’t matter. All that matters is that at the age of 40, with 179 Test matches to his name, Jimmy Anderson was completely pissed off to lose this one by a single run.

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James Anderson and Stuart Broad have been dropped from England’s Test squad. They’re not being rested. There’s no mention of that. They’re out. But they also might come back. It’s a soft binning.

There is more than one way to dispose of something you no longer want. There’s the unequivocal way – where you just open the bin and drop the item in – but there are equivocal ways too.

Garages, lofts, high-up cupboards. These are not so much storage locations as holding areas for the rubbish with which we have developed some kind of emotional bond. We make things easier for ourselves by moving these items into limbo to be disposed of on some unspecified future date.

> The Realm’s England XI – No.10 James Anderson

Anderson and Broad aren’t rubbish, of course. They are merely much-loved items that England are neither desperate to use nor dispose of.

So they’ve executed a soft binning.

“We felt that it was time to draw a line after the Ashes defeat, look forward and give some impetus with an influx of new players,” explained Andrew Strauss when announcing the squad for the upcoming West Indies tour.

“In respect of James Anderson and Stuart Broad, I want to emphasise this does not mean the end for them as England players,” he said. “It will be up to the new managing director and permanent head coach to decide on whether they will be involved this summer and beyond.”

Because that’s the scenario here. Anderson and Broad have been dropped by an interim management team. And that begs a question: If you’re dropped by a temporary coach and a temporary director of cricket, just how dropped are you? Really? How dropped are you when they explicitly float the possibility that you might return in the summer?

> Is Stuart Broad the most annoying cricketer there’s ever been?

At the same time, this is setting off down a particular path, isn’t it? It may well be down to the new Test coach to decide whether to ditch the nation’s two all-time top wicket-takers once and for all, but doing so would no longer be a bolt from the blue. It would be a bit more than a mere rubber-stamping but a lot less than springing it on everybody out of nowhere. That decision becomes a little easier. The initial heat of the furore will have passed. Half the plaster will already have been ripped off.

It becomes a recall rather than a retention too. Similar. But also different.

Is this devious machiavellianism on the part of Strauss et al? Probably not. But it’s nevertheless a decision that gives events a strong steer. They’ve given us not a clean break so much as a dirty fracture that may or may not heal.

This is the way the world ends. Not with a bang. But with an equivocal half-decision that will be reviewed by someone else at a later date.

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Here is a bunch of stuff that happened in 2021. It is not an exhaustive list, because an exhaustive list chronicling the activities of multiple people across an entire year would take far longer than a year to read. It is just a selection of striking cricket moments from the year just gone.

There is a bit of an England-focus, because this is a UK website. It would honestly be quite nice if England played a bit less and we could spread our attention wider.

Best Test victory: India over Australia at the Gabba

Australia hadn’t lost at the Gabba for 32 years. India went into the match without Ishant Sharma, Virat Kohli, Mohammed Shami, KL Rahul, Ravindra Jadeja, Hanuma Vihari, Umesh Yadav, Jasprit Bumrah and R Ashwin. Then, halfway through the match Navdeep Saini got injured.

No problem, they said. We’ll just chase 328 to win with who we’ve got left.

Worst five-for: Dom Bess

January brought us a truly incredible Test bowling performance when Dom Bess delivered one of the flukiest five-fors you’re ever likely to see. The CricViz boffins reckoned that Bess’s bowling against Sri Lanka warranted 0.18 wickets and yet he somehow emerged with 5-30.

It’s hard to pick a favourite wicket. Niroshan Dickwella being deceived by the longest of hops was good and Dasun Shanaka caught off Jonny Bairstow’s heel too, but it’s hard to look past PWH de Silva moving out of the path of the ball so that he could play an air reverse sweep.

Pretty soon after this, Bess was demoted to third-choice spinner, a position that very quickly saw him back in the Test team.

Most significant trophy: The Moose Cup powered by Daraz

Who says England are Test no-hopers with a broken domestic structure that no longer produces players of sufficient quality?

They’re holders of the Moose Cup powered by Daraz, for crying out loud!

Most contentious man management policy: England

Squad rotation is A FAILURE. Or at least it’s a failure if you’re already not-that-great at Test cricket. Back in June, New Zealand had the better of England in a drawn first Test, then made six changes so that key players would be fresh for the World Test Championship final. Despite this, they easily won the second Test.

England don’t really have the strength in depth to get away with this kind of thing in Test cricket. Speaking back in March, in the wake of a diminished Test tour of India, Eoin Morgan said that he and fellow England captain Joe Root wouldn’t rush to judge the squad rotation policy. “If you sat both of us down at the end of the year and we won the World Cup or came close, or challenged Australia or came close, the both of us would be very, very happy with the decisions that are made,” he said.

Now that we’ve reached that point, Morgan is presumably happier than Root – although that ain’t saying much, is it? The simple truth is that England need a greater number of really good players if they’re going to continue playing as much as they do.

Eeriest moment: James Anderson’s two near-identical clean-bowleds in one over

England won a Test match in India last year. That sentence has become sufficiently incredible to warrant typing out. It came at the start of February off the back of Joe Root’s third hundred of the year, which also happened to be his second double.

The highlight of the match came from James Anderson though. In India’s second innings, he bowled Shubman Gill with one of the finest clean-bowleds you’re ever likely to see. Then he almost exactly replicated the dismissal – perhaps even improved on it – to dispatch Ajinkya Rahane.

England then lost the next three Tests, delivering successive scores of 134, 164, 112, 81, 205 and 135, so excuse us if we take our joy where we can.

Best wicket celebration: Dom Sibley

There was a moment of excitement in the third Test when England briefly appeared to be fighting back thanks to Joe Root’s finest performance of the year (he took 5-8).

That excitement reached its crescendo when Dom Sibley caught Axar Patel…

Best debut: Kyle Mayers

A quick word for New Zealand’s Devon Conway, who made 200 in his very first Test innings, reached the mark with a six and was then run out – but against the odds, his wasn’t the best Test debut this year.

Back in February, Kyle Mayers made the second-highest individual score in a successful fourth innings run-chase when the West Indies beat Bangladesh. He came in at 59-3 and made 210 not out to deliver the fifth-highest run-chase in Test history.

Worst newspaper column: Michael Vaughan about Jofra Archer

Later in the year, in amongst all the Yorkshire terribleness, former England captain Michael Vaughan was accused of actual, out-and-out, explicit racism. Underpinning the case against him was his long-standing tendency to say some really dumb shit. His March column about some “whispers” he’d supposedly heard about Jofra Archer was a prime example.

The old “natural talent” trope has given rise to a series of false conclusions about Archer. “He makes the game look easy” becomes “he finds the game easy” becomes “he doesn’t need to try” becomes “he doesn’t try”. You probably shouldn’t build a column around whispers if a lot of those whispers are rooted in this sort of thinking and likely to exacerbate it. Vaughan, however, saw fit to go even further than “he doesn’t try” and take it into “he doesn’t care about Test cricket”.

“You simply cannot beat the feeling of winning a Test,” responded Archer.

Biggest fallacy: That every trophy has to be “fair”

New Zealand became Test champions and beaten captain Virat Kohli immediately suggested that the tournament needed to be a lab experiment, measuring and weighing every facet of excellence.

No, it doesn’t, Virat. New Zealand won. Try again next time.

Most satisfying shot: Liam Livingstone’s huge straight six

BOSH!

The definitive “go fetch it” shot. Perfect.

Finest moment in county cricket: Darren Stevens’ special creation

When Kent played Glamorgan, 45-year-old Darren Stevens walked in at 80-5 and hit 15 sixes on his way to 190 off 149 balls. His dismissal ended a partnership with Miguel Cummins that was worth 166. Cummins contributed exactly one run to that partnership.

Next ball, Matthew Quinn walked in and hit a six, which meant that he was instantly outscoring a guy who’d just been one half of a century partnership. It was a magnificently cricket moment and even though he was no longer on the pitch, no-one had contributed more to it than Stevens.

Most interesting scoring innovation: The Hundred

There was much moaning about the more obvious elements of The Hundred (its existence). This overshadowed some of the smaller things, like the use of an intuitive runs v balls scoring system throughout matches.

We truly believe that the concept of the over unnecessarily complicates limited overs scoring. We’d like to see ‘X runs off Y balls’ or ‘X needed off Y balls’ visible throughout every white ball match, whether the innings is due to last 100 balls, 120 balls or 300 balls.

Quote of the Year: Chris Silverwood

“Playing the top two teams in the world, in New Zealand and India, is perfect preparation for us as we continue to improve and progress towards an Ashes series in Australia at the back end of the year.”

An incredible thing to say at the time and a comment that has somehow aged badly too.

Best tourist: R Ashwin

R Ashwin went to Devon.

There is so much we like about this.

Peak duck: The first Test of England’s home series against India

England have broken all sorts of records this year and a large proportion revolve around the making of ducks. This habit arguably peaked on the first day of the India series, when they had four batsmen dismissed without scoring. At that point, it was the third time they’d suffered four ducks in an innings in five Tests.

It wasn’t the last time though.

Best run-out appeal: Rory Burns

Ain’t no run-out appeal like the run-out appeal that comes in the immediate aftermath of a drop.

This vies with the Anderson over as our highlight of the year.

Lowest moment: Five right-arm fast-medium bowlers for an Ashes Test in Australia

England picking four right-arm fast-medium bowlers and a spinner for an Ashes Test Down Under is an actual nightmare that we have. This time around they dispensed with the spinner and selected five.

There were many low moments during the first half of the Ashes, but this was the only time England consciously and deliberately transcended nightmares.

Needless to say, they failed to bowl Australia out in either innings.

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James Anderson took two wickets in his 11th over of the first Test: Cheteshwar Pujara for 4 and Virat Kohli for 0. Both are great and significant batsmen and if our maths is correct – and no guarantees on this one, people – there is only a four-run difference between those two scores. Yet the two wickets were celebrated rather differently.

We know what you’re immediately thinking. You’re thinking this is a Virat Kohli thing. And to a great extent, you’re correct.

Virat Kohli is a very passionate cricketer. He is also a man who is not averse to a bit of friction with the opposition. Throw in the fact that he’s India’s captain and the upshot is that bowlers tend to experience just a little bit more joy when they dismiss him.

But it is not just that. Because these reactions are VERY different.

Here’s Jimmy Anderson after he got Pujara out.

You’re wondering if we’ve got the right moment there, but honestly, we have.

Jimmy Anderson celebrated dismissing India’s number three by looking like a man who’s just walked out of his house and closed his front door behind him only to immediately wonder, “Wait, did I actually remember to pick up my keys?”

That is quite a weird wicket celebration and definitely not a big one.

Now here’s Anderson after he got Kohli out.

So basically almost in tears, wailing with delight.

It was really full-on. In fact it’s worth including another shot from quarter of a second later to underline that.

‘Why God, why? Why have you blessed me with this unbearable level of emotion?’

To be completely clear, this happened exactly one ball and around two minutes later.

So, a question…

What’s the most significant element underpinning this contrast?

• James Anderson?
• Virat Kohli?
• Cheteshwar Pujara?
• Context?

For sure, it’s all of them (and it’s interesting to think about what that says about Pujara), but context is the one we haven’t yet mentioned.

A wicket is always a surprise. It is a jolt of adrenaline for the bowler that takes them from weary to elated in an instant. But there is only so far you can go.

Okay, Jimmy only went from grumpy-weary to, placid-weary for the Pujara wicket and that is not much of a leap at all, but we’re pretty sure it would not be possible for a man of his age and seen-it-all-beforeness to go from grumpy-weary to quasi-religious delirium in the space of one delivery.

To get that second state, he needed a teaser. Pujara was that teaser.

With his senses heightened and a few beats-per-minute added to his heart-rate, Jimmy experienced a near-immediate supplementary jolt with the Kohli dismissal. He was primed this time and the impact was therefore enormous.

This is why what precedes a wicket is so important.

This is why hat-tricks are so great.

This wasn’t even a hat-trick. But it was Virat Kohli.

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We’ve written about James Anderson a lot over the years. He has a lot of qualities, but one of his finest – to our mind – is his irritability.

We named James Anderson in an England XI that comprised the players we have invested in the most and we also crowned him Lord Megachief of Gold 2017. If you want to read about how much he means to us or how great he is at cricket, those are the pieces you should read.

Today we want to talk about his tetchiness. Because Jimmy’s tetchiness is a wonderful thing.

Exhibit A: Here he is gleefully celebrating a run-out.

Jimmy is a man who does eventually get over on-field disappointments – but only once he has very visibly processed them. In this instance, Stuart Broad had run the batsman out after dropping a catch and Jimmy was still coming to terms with the drop. (This was actually the culmination of a whole series of things going wrong for Jimmy against Pakistan one day last summer. You can read all about it here. It was very entertaining.)

Dropped chances are of course a recurring minor frustration for Jimmy. There was a time when he’d sometimes get angry with the fielder when this happened, but nowadays he tends to opt for abject existential despair at the entire universe and everything within it.

For example, here’s Jimmy shrugging off a dropped catch from earlier in that same match.

And now here he is in another match, shrugging off an entirely different dropped catch.

But these are really just brief moments; mere windows into the abyss of ill-temper that is James Anderson when things aren’t necessarily going exactly as he wants them to.

Jimmy is at his best when you can see that he’s highly likely to react like this. The twin signals that he is in this mental state are (1) relentless chuntering (often to himself, sometimes to the batsman, frequently to no-one at all) and (2) turf-kicking. When these activities are occurring even semi-regularly, you know he’s pissed off.

This brings us to one of Jimmy’s finest tetchy moments and one that we feel sums up what’s so great about his proclivity for slumping into an absolutely godawful mood.

It came in the fifth Test of the 2013/14 Ashes and it was a wicket ‘celebration’.

Australia were 325-7 in their first innings and Ryan Harris was on 22. Ben Stokes bowled one on off stump and Harris sliced it to Anderson who caught it.

Utterly ENRAGED at this success, Anderson immediately volleyed the ball back at the stumps as hard as he could.

Stokes was really happy at having dismissed an Australian batsman. Jimmy was livid.

Jimmy was livid because England had already lost the Ashes and trivial things like taking wickets and potentially winning a Test match (spoiler alert: they didn’t) weren’t going to stop him feeling really, really, tremendously grumpy about everything. You know someone’s truly bone-deep dissatisfied with things when a positive development elicits such a strongly negative reaction.

Back in the days when he had a radio show on XFM, Ricky Gervais asked Karl Pilkington what his favourite word was. Pilkington went with “fed up”. His argument – which rather overpowered the pedantic one that ‘fed up’ isn’t a single word – was that the term perfectly summed up a particular emotional state for which there isn’t really an equally perfect synonym.

James Anderson cares a great deal about the fortunes of the England Test cricket team and when they aren’t doing well, he is fed up.

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“I didn’t really do anything out of the ordinary,” said Jimmy Anderson about an over that featured one of the finest clean-bowleds you’re ever likely to see, then another one that may or may not have been better, plus an LBW shout that could legitimately have been given sandwiched in between. It’s safe to say Jimmy has his own version of ‘ordinary’ these days.

You could forgive Anderson for going all Dr Manhattan and feeling like he doesn’t have much in common with humanity any more. Maybe he’ll retire after this series and head to Mars on his tod to build a whole new world just for himself.

That possibility is still some way off. For now we have more pressing questions, like which of those two clean bowleds was the better?

The wickets

Shubman Gill was clean bowled by a reverse swinging delivery for 50.

Ajinkya Rahane was clean bowled by a reverse swinging delivery for 0.

They were really, really similar dismissals. Similar enough that someone stuck them alongside each other in a GIF.

There were two balls in between: one that didn’t swing, which Rahane left; and then one that hit him on the pad that wasn’t given LBW – but which could have been.

The criteria

As everyone knows, these are the five elements you need to look at in these situations.

• Swing
• The stroke played (and beaten)
• Stump cartwheeliness
• The batsman’s reaction
• The context

All of these things are important.

Let’s not make it too complicated though. Let’s take each element in turn and decide whether the Gill wicket or the Rahane wicket was superior and then tot it all up at the end.

Swing

Simple one this. How much did the ball swing? More is obviously better.

Except it’s not a simple one. It’s not a simple one at all.

Because this is the Gill one…

… and this is the Rahane one.

You could probably get Hawkeye to rule on this one, but we were flicking between two tabs in our browser trying to weigh this up and went slightly mad.

We’ve concluded this is not a hair worth splitting.

Verdict: Draw

The stroke played (and beaten)

A wicket is not all about what the bowler does. A lot of it is about what the batsman does – or, more accurately, fails to do.

‘Bowled’ is the best dismissal because it’s the most unequivocal. That isn’t to say that all bowleds are equal though.

If the batsman edges the ball onto the stumps or is bowled off the pad, that really takes the gloss off.

Similarly, if he has a big yahoo and misses, that’s less good than when he attempts to do nothing more than block the ball and yet completely fails to make contact.

Both of these were fail-to-blocks, so this is another really hard one to call.

This is the shot Gill played…

… and this is the shot Rahane played.

Given the swing, you could probably argue that Rahane is actually the one presenting the full face of the bat.

However, from the viewer’s perspective, there’s something immensely satisfying about Gill’s position, pointing straight at the camera with the stumps spread behind him. That really seems to emphasise the brilliance of the delivery.

The bats of both Gill and Rahane actually came down slightly imperfectly before they reached those positions, but we swear the only nanosecond where it looked like the ball could possibly have avoided making contact with Gill’s bat was the nanosecond when it actually went past. It was almost like the ball had brought a bat-repelling forcefield with it.

Verdict: The Gill wicket

Stump cartwheeliness

This one’s very, very important. Everyone knows the more times a stump cartwheels, the better the dismissal.

Gill’s stump did two complete airborne revolutions before landing on its top. It then fell back towards the stumps, so that’s not quite two-and-a-half spins.

Rahane’s stump did two complete airborne revolutions before landing on its side.

Neither stump bounced and continued on its journey, which was a bit disappointing.

In complete contradiction of what we said at the start of this section, we’re actually going to give this one to the Rahane wicket because it nailed the landing. Even though it didn’t spin quite as much, it finished with a neat lie-down, so it gets points for execution.

Verdict: The Rahane wicket

The batsman’s reaction

Think of Mike Gatting’s “what have I just seen?” reaction to Shane Warne’s Ball of the Century or Virat Kohli’s face after he was bowled by Adil Rashid that time. The batsman’s reaction can really elevate a wicket to a new level.

This is another tricky one to call.

Gill went with “hold the pose” – which is a very excellent way of being out when it looks like you’ve played a perfectly sensible shot.

Rahane went the other way, plumping for, “was that my off stump flying out of the ground?”

This is perhaps even funnier, because what the hell else did he think that ball-on-stump sound might have been?

We feel like you can make a compelling case for both of these and they’re sufficiently different that it’s hard to weigh one against the other.

Verdict: Draw

The context

It was 92-2 for the Gill wicket and he had a half century to his name. Nothing much seemed to be happening in the game and then this happened.

That is quite dramatic.

However, we’re going to argue that context of Rahane’s wicket was better because Anderson had basically told him that he was going to try and bowl him out with the exact delivery he bowled him out with.

Firstly, Rahane had arrived at the crease because Anderson had bowled pretty much exactly that ball to Gill. Rahane knew this was a delivery that could definitely happen because it had literally just happened.

To doubly emphasise that there was danger afoot, Anderson then bowled a big in-swinger that hit Rahane on the pad and could, on another day, have been given out.

With his very next delivery, Anderson bowled Rahane.

Rahane couldn’t complain he didn’t see it coming. He knew what was coming, saw what was coming, tried to hit the ball and couldn’t.

Verdict: The Rahane wicket

Conclusion

James Anderson bowled Shubman Gill with an almost unimprovable delivery.

Three balls later, bowling to Ajinkya Rahane, he improved on it.

You can get this kind of stuff by email if you want. (The article, not the reverse-swinging clean bowleds).

It’s funny how people described as “ageless” are always, always, without exception, old.

People age in different ways. This is a phenomenon that first becomes apparent, and is arguably at its most jarring, when you’re in your late 20s or early 30s.

At some point during that period, you’ll bump into someone from school having not seen them for 10 or 15 years, and you’ll discover that they have aged considerably more rapidly or slowly than you.

If you’re only now starting to look like a full-grown adult, they’ll have peaked too soon and will already be barrelling through middle-age at pace. Or maybe they look exactly the same, throwing your grey beard and slapped-back hairline into sharp relief.

Lifestyle and genetics mean that you’ll probably only move further apart as the years wear on, but it’s this first revelatory ‘oh hey, some of us are REALLY ageing’ moment that tends to stick with you.

The divergence tends to be less marked in professional sports people for two reasons. (1) They tend to look after their bodies slightly better. (2) They’re all still pretty young in the grand scheme of things.

There are differences though.

Knock off early… or arrive late

Some players’ international careers ended far earlier than you probably think. Tim Bresnan was 28 when he played his last Test, while our man Rob Key was finally set aside at the age of 25.

Then there are players like Mike Hussey, who made his Test debut at 30 and yet still found time to squeeze in a 79-match career, or Rangana Herath, who took 233 wickets at 26.83 after he turned 35.

We once picked a whole Middle-Aged XI comprising players who performed exceptionally when most of their contemporaries had retired.

The interplay between physiology and experience means that players hit their peaks at different times.

Spry

None of this is what we want to talk about today though. What we want to talk about today is a word we rarely hear – ‘spry’.

Jimmy Anderson is starting to look spry.

As we’ve been saying, people age in different ways. A lot of people pile on the timber and even those of us who don’t balloon tend to at least solidify a touch.

But then very rarely you get someone who goes the other way. Anderson is one of those people.

Early years Shoaib Akhtar was a fairly normal-shaped human being, but as his career wore on he became more and more square.

Early Jimmy was not hugely dissimilar in shape to early Shoaib. They were both whippy bowlers who tended to attract words like ‘lithe’. Maybe there was a moment back then when it seemed credible Anderson’s body might have gone the same way as Shoaib’s, but it’s hard to imagine that now.

Early Jimmy’s was not a body that was partway through a journey from teenage skinniness to middle-aged heft, it was one that had really already reached its endurance athlete end point.

If anything, 18-year-old Jimmy was the chubby one. He was then exactly the same weight for 19 years before a bit of time off and some focused training that seems to have left made him even leaner in 2021.

Unlike most people his age, losing weight has aged Anderson. He is bowling as well – or better – than before. He is as fit – or fitter – than before. But wiry and sinewy and with less body fat, he currently has that look of an older person who is gradually being stripped back to the bare essentials.

James Anderson has become spry.

Or maybe he was just a bit dehydrated.

The Realm’s England XI – 10. James Anderson

If England’s 2020 Test summer is remembered for anything, it will not be for the return of BBC highlights, Ben Stokes doing absolutely everything against the West Indies or the bizarre sights and sounds of matches played without crowds. No, if England’s 2020 Test summer is remembered for anything it will be for when Stuart Broad dropped an absolute dolly off Jimmy Anderson and then ran the batsman out.

There was an awful lot going on here. An awful, awful lot.

Let’s set the scene

Jimmy Anderson was on four wickets for the innings and 597 Test wickets overall when suddenly his team-mates started dropping every single chance he created.

First Rory Burns managed to make this not be a catch.

Instead of being a wicket, the ball went for four.

Wholly unfazed, Anderson promptly created another chance later the same over.

Sadly, Zak Crawley was for some reason unable to suction the ball to his kneecap and the chance again went down.

Jimmy has seen some pretty incredible drops off his bowling before now and he is famously phlegmatic about this kind of thing.

Here is a lovely shot of Crawley looking up to see Jimmy midway through an ABSOLUTE MASTERCLASS of shrugging off minor frustrations and not letting your emotions show.

Enthusiasm undimmed, Jimmy created yet another chance in his very next over.

This one, it has to be said, was an absolute piece of piss.

Enter Stuart Broad

The ball gently lobbed to Broad at mid-on at almost precisely the same speed and parabola that the ball travels to him about 90 times a day before he’s about to run in and bowl.

If there was any catch you’d expect Stuart Broad to take, it was this one.

But Stuart Broad is not like other people.

Broad’s innate predisposition towards making any situation weirder and more remarkable led him to skip into the air and cross his legs in a kind of Riverdance move while trying to catch the ball with his wrists.

Needless to say, Stuart Broad did not take the catch.

So at this moment Anderson has seen three drops off his bowling inside two overs. This is, by any stretch, ‘quite annoying’.

Compounding this is the nature of the previous wicket to fall.

This is Jos Buttler successfully taking a catch to secure that wicket off the bowling of Broad.

What we can take from this is that catching was not impossible. It seems that catches – indeed quite remarkable catches – could in fact be taken by England fielders. It was just that they for some reason couldn’t be taken off the bowling of James Anderson.

What happened next was the best bit though. After failing to take the catch, Broad did two very wonderful things in quick succession.

Firstly, while still in the process of not catching, he did this kind of frustrated/exasperated hand gesture at the ball, as if it was the ball’s fault.

Then after that, he ran after the ball, picked it up and furiously knocked out middle stump.

Mohammad Abbas was run out by about a zillion miles.

What’s so especially magnificently brilliant about this is that everyone sort of has to pretend like, okay, Broad made amends for the terrible drop because the team still got a wicket and they didn’t concede any runs, so basically it all balances out.

But it doesn’t balance out, does it? Set aside the fact that a different batsman is out – a tail-ender and not a guy on a hundred-and-oldd – if the scorecard ends up the same for the team, Jimmy Anderson’s bowling figures look very different indeed.

Jimmy should have had 5-55 at this point, but in fact he still had 4-55.

And it’s not only that. The sheer volume of chances he was creating, Jimmy could quite legitimately have considered this not merely a wicket he failed to get, but a wicket actively stolen from him.

He surely would have picked up Pakistan’s final two wickets before too long. But now there was only one wicket left for him to get.

So technically the team’s done well out of this delivery and you’re supposed to be playing for the team, but… come on…

This is how Jimmy celebrated the run-out.

One of the all-time great wicket celebrations, we’re sure you’ll agree.

But it’s not just Jimmy. Think about how everyone else was feeling.

Broad’s embarrassed and ashamed and guilty, but also very, very pleased with himself for the run-out. That’s a lot to be grappling with simultaneously.

The rest of the team are also in a weird position. They’re doing well, they’re winning the match – yet the man who’s been doing far more than anyone else to put them in that position is basically enraged with all of them because they’re being completely incompetent. What kind of emotion is that? Sheepish elation?

Inevitably, Jimmy took the final wicket.

Here is how he looked at his team-mates after Dom Sibley caught the ball in the slips.

We didn’t know there could be a look that said, “Seriously? About fucking time.” But then we saw this and it turns out there is such a look and it isn’t even remotely vague or hard to interpret.

Has anyone ever been more pissed off about taking five wickets in an innings?

Magnificent stuff. Well done everyone.

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