'Old defender' Anderson stays two steps ahead

James Anderson hopes his vast experience can help him compensate for a drop in pace over the remaining years of his career.

Anderson, who turned 34 over the weekend, returned to the Test team at Old Trafford with a performance that showed his control and skills remain undimmed by age or injury. But it was noticeable that his average bowling speed in the game - about 81mph - was some way down on his peak.

While Anderson hopes he was simply "rusty" and that he will be able to generate more pace at Edgbaston, he accepts that he may be at the stage of his career where he has to rely more upon other attributes if he is to continue to flourish.

"I didn't feel like my speeds in Manchester were where they could be," Anderson said. "I felt a bit like Matthew Hoggard at the end of his career when he slowed down a bit but his control was pretty good.

"With the skills I have, I can do a job even if my speeds did drop. With experience you can stay one step ahead in your head. It is like an old defender in football who might not have the pace of a quick striker but he's two steps ahead of him upstairs."

Anderson has been sidelined by several injuries over the last year or so. After sustaining a side strain during the Edgbaston Ashes Test 12 months ago, he missed the first Test of the series in South Africa due to a calf injury and then the Lord's Test against Pakistan due to a shoulder injury.

But, after a modest tour of South Africa, he was back to something approaching his best at the start of this English summer. He claimed 21 wickets in the three Tests against Sri Lanka at an average of just 10.80 apiece - albeit in helpful conditions at times - and remains the No. 2-rated bowler in the ICC's rankings for Test cricket. He is just one ranking point behind India's R Ashwin.

He denies that the relative glut of injuries are necessarily a reflection of ageing and suggests that he could emulate Glenn McGrath and play until he is 37 years old.

"The way I feel at the moment, mentally, I've still got a hunger to play the game and a hunger to take wickets and help my team win matches," Anderson said. "As long as I've got that hunger I'm going to keep working, keep improving and keep working on my fitness and if I get to 37 then great. I just try to concentrate on staying fit for the next game.

"I thought I bowled well against Sri Lanka. I'm not sure it's the best I've ever bowled but I felt in really good form and I just wanted to build on it, but the injury meant it wasn't possible.

"Fitness wise I keep working hard. My practice over the years has gone from searching for perfection to just doing as little as possible. The bare minimum. But when I do practise I try to make sure it's absolute quality rather than going through the motions. If I don't practise much I make sure what I do do is to the highest quality possible."

The England selectors took a lot of criticism for their decision not to risk Anderson in the first Test of this series at Lord's. Although he was fit to bowl in the nets ahead of the game and subsequently played in part of Lancashire's Championship match against Durham, he now admits it was "probably wise" not to rush him back into the Test team before he had gained match fitness after his shoulder injury. He hopes that, having had that Championship game and the Test in Manchester, he should be somewhere near his best at Edgbaston.

"Looking back, without having had any game time before that first Test, it was probably wise to get some overs under my belt before I came back into the Test side," Anderson said. "I think it was probably the right decision.

"There was some rustiness in Manchester. I bowled 20-odd overs at Southport after four weeks out of the game, and then at Lord's with the weather before the game I only bowled six overs outside so there was a bit of rustiness. But now I've got that match practice under my belt hopefully I can build on that and my speeds go up rather than down. The age I'm at, four or five weeks without bowling shouldn't make me lose my form that much."

As Anderson matures, so his role within the squad may start to change. It has been noticeable over recent months that Chris Woakes, in particular, has started to use the wobble-seam delivery demonstrated with such success by Anderson and, at times, started to hide his grip of the ball until the point of delivery so that batsmen cannot anticipate which way it will swing.

But Anderson denied that Woakes is the obvious inheritor of his art and insisted that he is learning from England's younger bowlers as much as the other way around.

"Chris has a lot of skills, but I don't see us as similar bowlers," Anderson said. "I don't know why. He's got more pace, he's got a lovely action, that's what he's got going for him, a nice repetitive action that will help him for the rest of his career. I'm not forcing myself upon him.

"As a group of bowlers we are talking to each other all the time. We are trying in the nets to give each other bits of information that are going to be useful whether it's on the opposition, tactics or specifics in skills and we all learn from each other.

"I learn from Chris Woakes, I've learnt from Steven Finn and Stuart Broad, we all pass information round to each other, it's a really open forum and I think that's how it should be. I think that's how teams get better."

Poor weather in Birmingham means the Test pitch may lack just a little of the carry that England enjoyed when defeating Australia a year ago. But the surface is still expected to provide some assistance to seamers, especially on the first morning and with the new ball, and little encouragement for spinners. As a result, England look highly likely to go into the game with four seamers and Moeen Ali as their main spinner.