The Trent Bridge Test, between England and India, will be remembered for a unique record. In the history of Test cricket, this was the first time that the No. 11 batsmen from both teams scored a half-century.
After Mohammad Shami scored an unbeaten 51 in his last wicket partnership with Bhuvneshwar Kumar, it was James Anderson who notched up his maiden first-class fifty in a 198-run alliance with Joe Root.
On a wicket that has proved to be a graveyard for them, the bowlers found a way to enjoy themselves – with a bat. “I was thinking last night that if I ever get a Test fifty, it will be on a wicket like this,” Anderson said after his 81-run knock on the fourth day.
“When you bowl on a pitch like this, you know it is very, very hard to get someone out. So when you go in to bat, you know that if you get your gameplan right and you play straight, you can stick in there for a long time.
“You feel that there are only a certain balls that can get you out. I had a gameplan to which I stuck and Joe helped me stick to it,” Anderson said.
When Anderson came into the middle, Root was protecting him against the Indian bowlers, hogging most of the strike. However, as the No. 11 settled down, he said he started to feel like a batsman and was more confident of facing the bowling.
“I thought we had a really good plan,” Anderson said. “Yesterday and initially today Joe was facing most of the balls and giving me the strike for only a couple of balls every over. Once I got myself in, we started rotating a bit more regularly. Joe guided me through every ball of my innings.”
Anderson’s struggles against the short ball have been well documented over the last year or so by the Australian and Sri Lankan pacers. It was no surprise, therefore, that the Indians kept peppering him with the bouncers. But he got comfortable facing up to the short pitched bowling after a while and India’s strategy of persisting with the plan was questioned.
Anderson, however, sided with MS Dhoni and his men, saying, “I’d probably keep bowling short at me, to be honest.” Although he admitted the bouncer lost its lethality due to the slowness of the pitch.
“The short ball wasn’t that dangerous because the pitch is so slow that you just stand up and play it. Also, we knew that bowling short ball consistently will tire them out and we could capitalize on that later on.”
There was one disappointment for Anderson though – that of missing out on a Test century. “I probably should have left that one but gave it a kitchen sink and got out,” he said ruing the wild swipe that had him caught at the second slip and gave Bhuvi his maiden five-wicket haul in Test cricket.
