In one fell swoop, without warning or indication, without even a hint of what was coming, a 26-year-old association was snapped in a jiffy. Inarguably the greatest son of the soil was let go without so much as a thank you, a decision that has so infuriated members and supporters that the ‘offending’ party is now contemplating a formal farewell to celebrate the life and times of Test cricket’s most prolific wicket-taker among fast bowlers.

When he dismissed Kent’s Zimbabwean batter Tawanda Muyeye for his third wicket of the innings and his 50th of the season on September 15, James Anderson would hardly have imagined that it would be his final wicket-taking contribution to Lancashire. Having taken over the captaincy of the embattled county towards the middle of the 2025 season, he was appointed full-time skipper in the season gone by.

Fabulous campaign

Personally, it was another fabulous campaign for the 44-year-old king of swing, whose 50 wickets came at the fantastic average of 17.68. But the team spiralled from one disaster to another, finishing second from last in Division Two, its worst-ever Championship finish.

Incoming director of cricket Paul Farbrace, who has ambitiously charted out a four-year time-frame to return the county to its glory days, and recently appointed chief executive Richard Kenyon have held forth on the need to rebuild the stuttering outfit and clearly, they feel that despite plenty of fight still left in Anderson, he doesn’t exactly figure in their immediate long-term plans.

Anderson became superfluous to England’s scheme of things under Ben Stokes and Brendon McCullum in July 2024 when he was ushered into retirement after the Lord’s Test against West Indies. At the time, he had expressed the desire to play on for another three years, assuming blithely — and justifiably — that he would wind down his First Class career with the team he had served outstandingly for so long. Unfortunately, that was not to be after the county decided to sever ties with the champion who took 443 First Class wickets, 83 List A scalps and 50 T20 wickets in 213 matches across formats.

Even in the short interlude since Lancashire’s dramatic and largely unpopular call, several counties have started weighing up their options because they believe that even when he is 45, which he will turn midway through next season, Anderson still is far from a spent force or a liability. But while Anderson hasn’t yet invoked the R (retirement) word, it’s hard to see him switching allegiance at this late stage of his career. Anderson made his displeasure at the call apparent without launching into an all-out attack, saying in a statement, “If it was up to me, it wouldn’t have ended like this, but I wish the players and fans all the best for the future.” But sadly, it wasn’t up to him, and so this is how it has ended.

One hopes that when the emotions settle down, both parties concerned will be able to look back at the long-standing relationship with fondness and nostalgia. Anderson cut his teeth with Lancashire as a 17-year-old in 2000, made his First Class debut in 2002 and was playing One-Day International cricket that same year. His Test debut came in May 2003, also at Lord’s where he made his final appearance for his country, and from then on, he became one of the most valued members of the five-day squad, striking up an excellent relationship with that other great England pacer of his generation, Stuart Broad.

Easy, repeatable action

A master of swing who went on and on because of his easy, repeatable action that seemingly put very little strain on his body, Anderson was at his most prolific at home, of course, but it wasn’t as if he struggled to adapt to the challenges of the subcontinent where, more than anywhere else, overseas quicks have struggled to make an impact. Towards the later stages of his career, he developed the scrambled-seam delivery that brought him great success, but for the large part, especially but not only with the new ball, he was the master of having the ball on a string and making it go this way and that with a gentle tug here, a little pull there.

An overwhelming majority of his 704 Test wickets came on home turf – 438, which accounted for 62.22% of all his successes in the five-day game – but that’s also because he played 106 of his 188 Tests in England. For a fast bowler to continue on for 21 years at the highest level and average nearly nine Tests a year is little short of staggering; it speaks to not just his fitness levels and his propensity to take excellent care of his body, but also to his commitment and hunger and fire and passion, traits that aren’t necessarily the most prominent in an era where shelf-lives are getting increasingly shorter and the lure of the 20-over shootout is almost impossible to resist.

Anderson was at his most comfortable with the Duke’s ball in his right hand, a ball he practically grew up with, though he showed his felicity with the Kookaburra used in most other parts of the world. Across Australia, New Zealand and South Africa, he snaffled 138 wickets in 40 matches, not in the out-of-the-world category but definitely numbers that exploded the myth that he was a home bully. He also had decent success in India with the SG Test which he isn’t all that familiar with – 17 Tests across 18 years fetched him 44 wickets. On his last tour of India in February-March 2024, he grabbed 10 wickets in four outings, gatecrashing into the hitherto exclusive 700-club of Muttiah Muralitharan and Shane Warne in the scenic surrounds of Dharamshala in the final Test of a five-match series that the hosts bossed 4-1.

In perfect harmony

Anderson in action wasn’t unlike poetry in motion, with his unhurried and visibly inexplosive run-up and perfect harmony between the operative body parts as he slotted into his delivery stride. It wasn’t as if he didn’t have bad days, but they were so few and far between as to fall in the ‘hen’s teeth’ section. When the conditions favoured him, he got the ball to whoop around corners, but even when there wasn’t much help on offer, he was still a perennial threat because he was always at the batters, giving them not a moment’s respite.

That he didn’t lose his swing even for a short period over such an extended timeframe at the top level is tribute to his perseverance and humility. Sometimes, it is easy to get carried away with what might appear to be a God-given gift but which needs to be honed and polished and worked on assiduously, day after day, practice session after training stint. Anderson knew he was special, but he also knew that to take that for granted would come with terrible repercussions. Hence the constant quest to keep improving, to keep becoming a better version of himself, to keep plugging away at the nets and in game situations, so that he did not remain static while the world moved ahead of him.

In so many ways, England’s decision to disassociate themselves from Anderson after the disastrous 2015 50-over World Cup campaign proved to be a masterstroke. After their first-round elimination — defeat to Bangladesh pulled the rug from under their feet and ensured that they didn’t even make it to the quarterfinals despite eight teams advancing to the knockouts — England’s bosses got together and arrived at the conclusion that they needed to be smart about how they went about their business. There was a distinct slant towards all-rounders (not just utility players like Mark Ealham and Ronnie Irani and their likes in the mid-1990s), which meant alongside Broad, Anderson was put out to pasture.

Collateral damage

Anderson’s ODI numbers at the stage were anything but ordinary — 269 wickets in 194 matches, economy 4.92, a wicket every six overs — but he was collateral damage as a new-age mentality took deep root under Eoin Morgan’s captaincy. Who’s to say that the Morgan philosophy was flawed, given that England, finally, clinched the World Cup on home patch in 2019 even though they didn’t actually beat New Zealand on the field in the final, either in regulation time or in the Super Over, both of which ended with scores level.

Anderson had bowled close to 1,600 overs in ODIs by March 2015, and though he pulled the plug on his List A career in 2019, the T20 challenge was something he was willing to take on head-on. In what has since become his final season with Lancashire, he figured in the domestic T20 blast, mostly fastidiously parsimonious even if, in his final 20-over outing for the county, he ended up conceding 50 runs in his four overs in the 22-run defeat of bitter rivals Yorkshire in the War of the Roses.

Because the next county season isn’t until another six months from now, one might get the impression that Anderson has some time before deciding on his next course of action. Only he can say with certainty if he is contemplating a change of counties, if only for one final hurrah; the most dramatic script will entail him taking a bagful of wickets against his old home and bowling his new side to the most comprehensive of victories, but such fairytale scripts seldom play out in real life.

The big call ahead of him is whether he is game to give it one more shot from an unfamiliar dressing room after having spent all his professional career with Lancs since his maiden appearance as a teenager. Whether he swings in that direction remains to be seen. What is beyond question is the magnificence of his craft, the joy he brought so many with his command and control, his prime position in the pantheon of cricketing greats and the almost iron-clad certainty that he will remain the only fast bowler in the 700-wicket club in Test cricket for a long, long time to come.