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Here we are again then. Another team carried by James Anderson has somehow concluded that it is too good for James Anderson and has asked him to leave. Who next? Is he going to get booted off the Burnley CC “Anyone free on Sunday?” WhatsApp thread when they aim for a fresh start in the next season’s over-40s league?

Given the awkwardness and shabbiness that characterised Anderson’s protracted Test exit, it’s almost possible to forget that England did actually give him a dedicated send-off Test. For a few days there, the more pompous parts of English cricket regally simmered him for another of their feasts, their appetite for ceremony seemingly bottomless. 

Theme Tests

To our mind, English cricket has a growing problem with this kind of thing. Every time a long-serving player announces their retirement – and they generally are announced in advance these days – the game’s veneration apparatus fires up so that a Special Test Match can be put on.

It is entirely natural to talk about a great player if you know it’s their final appearance. Things have gone too far now though. It’s not just a guard of honour for their final innings; it’s performative ovations, interviews with the family and endless rheumy-eyed montages. 

Anderson’s dedicated theme Test, against the West Indies in 2024, was about as bad as they come. It wasn’t just the relentlessness of the tribute, it was the contrivance of it. Everyone knew he’d been dropped, but they’d allowed him this one last Test to say goodbye. That made it all about one man in a way Test matches involving 21 other cricketers shouldn’t be. The West Indies being cold and bad didn’t help with this at all.

And it had to be at Lord’s too, of course – the supposed ‘home’ of a sport that was bequeathed to Anderson by a family who’d most likely never been there; a sport he played, fell in love with and mastered elsewhere. 

We’d seen this kind of thing before, of course. Alastair Cook’s final Test was overblown, but at least it was the end of a series. Stuart Broad got himself plenty of attention, but the prospect of levelling an Ashes series ensured that match could never have been all about him. The artifice of Anderson only being available for the first Test of a three-Test series made his feel like more of an exhibition game.

And it continues. Every big retirement seems to bring with it a new way of dicking about with the live game that’s actually going on. Ben Stokes’ retirement was announced not merely mid-Test, but while he was in the middle of a bowling spell.

What is this obsession with exalting endings? Why does it matter? In reality, the final Test is the least important one. Nothing else hinges on it. The shape of a player’s career is already established by then. 

There’s a line between saying “thanks for your work” and manufacturing an artificial occasion. The way they dress these things up, it’s as if they’re more important than all that’s gone before. 

International sport isn’t a black tie awards ceremony. It isn’t a vehicle for tearful, indulgent acceptance speeches. It’s a competition. The players are there to compete. It doesn’t matter what they’ve done in the past, because every match is of its moment. 

Not everyone is afflicted by this trend, of course. For a start, most players’ final Tests can be identified only with hindsight. Cheteshwar Pujara only saw fit to label his a full two years after he played it. 

But even those who do have clarity at the time can choose to do things differently, if they want to. Two games before Stokes began conspicuously kicking over tables and firing party poppers, Kane Williamson wandered out of the spotlight with a magnificently casual, “Oh, by the way, that was my final Test.”

When push comes to shove

If you’d like a clear example of the fundamental worthlessness of all this pageantry, consider how you feel about Lancashire declining to offer Anderson a new contract. Specifically, does it feel like a new thing or does it feel like something we’ve had before?

Because England had already been ushering Anderson out for a good long while before that final tribute Test and that’s the feeling that endures. 

“So sorry. We’d love you to stay longer, but there’s a few things we really need to crack on with this afternoon,” they’d said. “Here’s your coat. Let us get the door for you.”

When you’re a quick bowler – and everyone forgets now that Anderson started off meaningfully rapid – retirement starts to become an acceptable topic of conversation as soon as you tip over into your 30s. Even if you’re playing well, people can’t help but begin to look past you at least some of the time.

If you’re old enough to remember – but not so old that you can’t remember – you’ll recall a time when young upstarts like Steven Finn were spoken of as natural successors. Coaches and commentators would at times be explicit about this. Finn was being groomed to take over the mantle, yet he would ultimately play his final Test eight years before the man who’d been considered his predecessor.

A few years later, Andrew Strauss came crashing in to make a proper start on the clear-out, waltzing Anderson off into the preliminary disposal zone of the garage. ‘I’m not definitively chucking him away,’ was the message, ‘but whoever takes over this job will have to actively go in there and bring him back’.

That is exactly what Rob Key and Brendon McCullum did. 

But then a year or two later, they forced him out. 

James Anderson, clearly, is not a man who goes gentle into that good night. He’d no doubt concede himself that he tends to need a push with these things. There’s been so much pushing already though that it all feels a little undignified and the memories of a ceremonial Lord’s Test can’t undo that.

Is this the way the news really had to break; that Lancashire weren’t going to offer him a new contract? No coaching job to temper that development? No retirement announcement that would negate the need to even mention contracts at all?

We assume that for whatever reason – both parties’ refusal to give an inch, perhaps – there was no other way. 

The fact this has happened again makes England’s greatest bowler look like some kind of recurrent, helpless victim. Lancashire fare even worse, coming across as titanically ungrateful and with an inflated sense of their own worth.  

No matter how old he gets, rushing to move on from James Anderson never looks too smart. Between Steven Finn’s retirement and his own, he took 241 Test wickets at 22.95. That’s more wickets than Steve Harmison took in his entire career. More wickets than Jasprit Bumrah. More wickets than Garry Sobers.

There’s what you think should be happening to a player of his age – steep, inexorable decline – and then there are the facts. 

The facts are these: Lancashire are in Division 2. They finished second from bottom this year and Anderson was the best bowler in the division. He took 50 wickets at 17.68.

We assume Lancashire’s budget for its playing staff is not colossal and we’d guess Sir Anderson was being paid rather more than the average Division 2 seamer. Nevertheless, he played on for the club when he didn’t need to and stepped in when they suddenly needed a captain. If the county has retained any kind of reputation for its cricket over this last decade, it is almost entirely down to one man.

No-one emerges from this well. It is, perhaps, a more honest finish.

Fortunately, endings don’t matter.

Welcome to the realm!