Anderson a genuine swing option

London: Poor Jimmy A. Damned if he does, damned if he doesn't, so it seems.

If the ball doesn't swing, then he gets labelled as a bowling all-you-can-eat buffet. When it does, and he produces the sort of virtuoso performance that graced the first Test, he gets called the equivalent of the flat-track batting bully. The inability of some to recognise and applaud extreme excellence never fails to astound me.

So let me try to put things in perspective. James Anderson was given a set of circumstances that might have been on his personal wish list: Ground with a reputation for swing? Check; Dukes conker? Check; Lush outfield to maintain shine? Check; Hard-wicket batsmen, inexperienced against the first two? Check; Mind-blowing catching? Check.

Broad strokes

Funny thing, though, precisely the same set of circumstances were given to Stuart Broad, who the previous week had produced an eight-wicket spell for Nottinghamshire in which, according to his team-mate Graeme Swann, he had hooped it around like never before and, in part because of the length he chose to bowl, he scarcely got the ball off the straight. In other words, giving someone the tools for the job in no way means the job will get done.

Vic Marks was right the other day in suggesting that Anderson's bowling was reminiscent of Ian Botham's when he has lean, young and whippy (and don't forget that Vic was privy to it more than most); perhaps the most devastating spell of its kind since he destroyed Pakistan at Lord's in 1978 with a tally of eight for 34. I still have a recollection of a ball Botham bowled to Haroon Rashid, a mirror image of that with which Mohammad Aamer dismissed Mitchell Johnson recently. It went down the line of leg stump, before swinging sharply away, first to turn the batsman inside out, and then pluck out the off pole.

Botham was and Anderson is a swing bowler through and through and at this point we should be clear about the distinction between that and someone who can swing the ball. It is not just nit-picking semantics.

Matthew Hoggard, say, could swing the ball, but he did so on his action, with a lowish arm, and one way only. A genuine swing bowler is a manipulator of the ball. He can work it this way and that at will with a tilt of the wrist and little more. He uses swing as a spinner does variations. Botham could do this and so too could Richard Ellison and the Worcestershire bowler Phil Newport, who had a brief flirtation with the England side.