GEORGE DOBELL reviews Jimmy Anderson: Finding The Edge and finds the former England fast-bowler showing a vulnerability rarely seen in interviews
4.5 stars (out of 5)
There's an episode of The Simpsons that details Homer's visit to an all-you-can-eat seafood restaurant. Having eaten the place out of shrimp (and several plastic lobsters) Homer is thrown out only to drive around town looking for another all-you-can-eat seafood restaurant. And, when he couldn't find one, he goes fishing.
As this book makes clear, it has pretty much been the same with James Anderson. Not with seafood, but his love - his need, even - to play cricket. Despite having taken more wickets than any other seamer in the history of Test cricket, despite having delivered more balls, despite having an international career which extended into a third decade and despite all the pain and sacrifice inherent in such a career, his hunger for the game remained unsated. "I would never have retired by my own decision," he writes.
He describes the moment he was informed of his international retirement - there is no pretence that this decision was reached mutually-by Brendon McCullum, Ben Stokes and Rob Key in the bar of a Manchester hotel, as akin to a 'hit' in the mafia sense. It's not that he can't see some logic in it, or find some respect for the manner in which the decision is communicated to him. It's simply that he still loves it and still feels he is good at it.
He never had that moment he was told all professionals experienced: that moment when they know it's over. He never knew. He probably never would have known. He admits he may have required carrying from the field, a physically broken wreck, to accept he couldn't do it any more.
"Who would choose to stop doing the only thing they were put on this earth to do?" he asks. "Especially if they knew they could still do it."
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While the details around the end of Anderson's career probably make up the freshest and most arresting parts of the story, there are many other nuggets within this entertaining book. For example, he admits that, at one stage, he "doesn't think he [Kevin Pietersen] should be let back in the side" following the text-gate episode with members of the South Africa side. He reveals the absurdity of conditions on the Ashes tour of 2021/22, which involved five weeks of isolation, almost no training and a diet so awful he wonders whether it is a deliberate tactic from Cricket Australia. And most of all, he details his hunger to play cricket; typically, he reacts to Andrew Strauss' call telling him he had been dropped from the squad for the Caribbean tour at the start of 2022 by going to the gym.
There's real insight, too. Such is Anderson's relationship with his 'ghost', Felix White, that he displays a level of vulnerability which is rarely there in media interviews. So he opens up on the bullying that he suffered at school, the relationships he has with his family, the discomforting aspects of fame (at one stage, a nurse asks for an autograph as he and his wife are reeling from a miscarriage) and, most of all, how much he needed cricket to make sense of his existence. The some-time England team psychologist Mark Bawden, to whom Anderson was almost aggressively defensive for the first few months of their relationship, emerges as a key figure in helping him channel his muddle of aggression and insecurity.
"All I want to do is play cricket," he writes, "to be in that safe space of semi-red mist with someone like Shubman Gill, where everything is simpler." Yes, the England team relied on him heavily for many years. It's clear from this book that he relied on them - on the game - every bit as much.
If the structure, with its dozens of short chapters, occasionally leaves you wanting more - the 2012 series win in India and the 2013/14 Ashes debacle, for example, are covered in just four pages each - it does also sustain its pace. It covers almost every major incident in English cricket over the last quarter of a century.
For Anderson's history is, by and large, the recent history of England cricket. He's been at the centre of every triumph and every setback. As such, he has a valuable perspective on the highs and lows and the characters involved.
"The end comes much quicker than you think," Anderson tells Jamie Smith, who is on debut, ahead of his own final Test. That it came quickly for Anderson speaks volumes not just for his enduring enthusiasm but, perhaps, the fleeting nature of our existence.
It's an insightful book, it's an entertaining book and it's a highly recommended book.
Book details:
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