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Anderson banishes Headingley demons as England enforce follow-on
- Updated: May 20, 2016
Sri Lanka 91 (Anderson 4-16, Broad 4-21) and 1 for 0 trail England 298 (Bairstow 140, Hales 86) by 206 runsScorecard and ball-by-ball details
Like Sachin Tendulkar’s Test record at Lord’s, there has always been something incongruous about James Anderson’s bowling statistics at Headingley. The Lancastrian-in-Yorkshire factor aside, it has never made much sense that the most skilful England bowler of his generation should find it so difficult to impose himself at the English venue most conducive to his talents.
In seven previous Tests at Headingley, spanning his full 13-year career, Anderson had racked up 19 wickets at 41.36, with a best innings haul of 3 for 91. That performance, however, didn’t exactly cheer him up either. It came during Sri Lanka’s last visit to Yorkshire in 2014, when he left the ground in tears following his penultimate-ball dismissal to Shaminda Eranga.
Today, however, Anderson banished his demons in style, producing a sensational 70-ball onslaught of swing and seam, spread across two spells either side of tea, for which Sri Lanka – in their weakened post-Jayawardene and Sangakkara state – had no answer. It would be hard to claim he will ever feel quite as at home here as England’s other main man of the second day, Yorkshire’s own Jonny Bairstow, but this was a performance with a distinctly cathartic feel.
Anderson wrapped up Sri Lanka’s innings with figures of 5 for 16 in 11.4 overs, his 19th five-wicket haul in 115 Tests, during which he also overhauled Kapil Dev’s tally of 434 Test wickets to move into sixth place on the all-time list. Among fast bowlers, only Courtney Walsh (519) and Glenn McGrath (563) lie ahead of him. On this form, with a maximum of 13 innings still to come this summer, he could yet move to within striking distance of the top guns before the season is done.
Anderson may, however, have to share some of the spoils with his new-ball partner, Stuart Broad. It was a measure of Broad’s current standing as the world’s No. 1 Test bowler that, although this was by no means his most incisive spell in recent months, his unrelenting accuracy allied to subtle seam and bounce were still sufficient to return figures of 4 for 21.
Ben Stokes, with a solitary but crucial strike with the first ball after tea, completed the wickets column as Alastair Cook, in keeping with England’s new hard-and-fast attitude, chose to enforce the follow-on for the first time since the Wellington Test against New Zealand in March 2013.
In the end, bad light came to Sri Lanka’s rescue as play was abandoned for the play after just two Anderson deliveries in the second innings. But they will need to score more than twice their meagre total of 91 when play resumes on …
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