James Anderson

The greatest fast bowler England produced, and the world's most prolific in Tests, James Anderson, over the course of a two-decade career went where no one of his ilk had before, sustaining performance of the highest order over 40,000 balls and taking 704 Test wickets.

His command of swing bowling, especially on his home grounds, was the stuff of legend, and the records he chalked up bore witness. He was an integral part of three victorious Ashes campaigns, and he took 15 or more wickets in series against Australia, India and South Africa 11 times.

When Anderson's 500th Test wicket came in September 2017 against West Indies, he became only the sixth player, and third fast bowler, after Glenn McGrath and Courtney Walsh, to reach the landmark. Few would have thought then that he had another seven years of top-drawer fast bowling, and 40% as many wickets as he had taken till then, in the tank. What he lost in speed, he more than made up for in guile and ball-whisperer's cunning, stripping white-ball cricket out of his schedule to thrive in the five-day format.

Anderson had played only three one-day games for Lancashire when he was hurried into England's one-day squad in Australia in 2002-03 as cover for Andy Caddick. In Adelaide he produced a remarkable ten-over stint that cost just 12 runs, earning a World Cup spot; in the game against Pakistan in that tournament, he produced a match-winning spell.

His debut Test, that summer against Zimbabwe, yielded a five-for, and it was followed by an ODI hat-trick against Pakistan, but there was a dip in his fortunes after that for a while, when he was on the periphery of the Test side as he attempted to change his action to avoid injury, affecting his pace and rhythm in the process.

Anderson took six wickets in the Mumbai Test that England won to square the series in India in 2006, and then went on the horror Ashes tour of 2006-07, where he did about as well as the rest of his side, who were wiped 5-0. The World Cup in the West Indies that followed was a little better (he took two wickets apiece in three games).

A second coming materialised in Wellington on the 2007-08 tour of New Zealand, where Anderson and Stuart Broad were paired for the first time. The same opponents were blown away at Trent Bridge (Anderson 7 for 43) a few weeks later, and he took five in the consolation win against South Africa at The Oval that finished that series 2-1 in favour of the visitors. Of his 11 wickets in the two Tests against West Indies in 2009, nine came at Chester-le-Street at under 14 runs apiece.

In 2010, Anderson came of age comprehensively, turning from an occasional purveyor of "magic balls" to a relentless line-and-length merchant dealing in dot balls, building pressure and reaping the reward. He was unhittable in every sense, with a miserly economy rate and a range of weapons that made him a threat on every surface. A career-best 11-wicket haul against Pakistan at Trent Bridge that year was the prelude to a revelatory tour of Australia where he took 24 wickets.

By then, deadly with conventional swing and seam, and with a new line in reverse swing, he was arguably the most complete fast bowler in the world. Twenty-one wickets came in the four-Test series against India at home in 2011; the following year, in England's landmark series win in India, he only took 12 wickets in the four Tests, at 30.25, but was described by MS Dhoni as "the major difference between the two sides".

In 2013 against New Zealand at Lord's, a ground where he enjoyed much success, he got to 300 Test wickets. When he began the Ashes with a match-winning ten-wicket haul at Trent Bridge, he looked in imperious form, but the following nine Tests against Australia were far less successful, and a chastened England returned home after a battering down under in the return series.

Anderson took 54 wickets in ten Tests against Sri Lanka, India and West Indies in 2014 and the following season, but the ODI World Cup in the antipodes before that Caribbean tour was much less productive, and it brought the curtain down on his one-day career - where too he remains England's leading wicket-taker, with 269 wickets.

A northern spring, Sri Lanka the opposition, cheered him with three five-wicket hauls in successive Tests in Leeds and Chester-le-Street in 2016, but a shoulder injury marred his summer and he was innocuous in India, where England slumped to a 4-0 defeat that winter. Fit again for the South Africa series at home in 2017, he averaged 14.10 for 39 wickets against them and West Indies. He was then the pick of the attack as England were crushed in Australia once more. When he bowled Mohammed Shami to record his 564th Test wicket and complete England's 4-1 win over India in 2018, he broke McGrath's record for most wickets by a fast bowler.

Anderson's batting improved over his career, from his early days as a fully paid-up rabbit. In Cardiff in 2009, he survived for 69 nail-chewing minutes to help stave off defeat by Australia. In 2014 he struck 81 against India - his maiden first-class fifty - in a Test-record stand of 198 for the tenth wicket with Joe Root. He served England with distinction as a nightwatchman on numerous occasions and went 54 Test innings before collecting a duck, an England record. He was also an outstanding fielder, strikingly so for a fast bowler, lithe in the outfield and sharp in the catching positions.

In 2021, bowling as well as he ever had - and arguably better than he had done in Asia before - he took 6 for 40 in Galle, leading to a landmark 2-0 away win over Sri Lanka. There then were two five-fors against India at home, a year apart, and his long-heralded 700th wicket came against the same opposition in Dharamsala in 2024, before he added another four against West Indies, bowing out at Lord's, where he had started 21 years before.