Tra La Days Are (Almost) Over
Michael Henderson
An appreciation of the great bowling partnership of Anderson and Broad as they come close to the end.
Neil Sedaka is coming to the Oval. Howard Greenfield will also be present in spirit. Half a century ago, after a decade of writing chart-topping toe-tappers, composer and lyricist decided it was time to part, and took their leave with a lovely number.
‘This will be our last song together’ went their last song together. Except it wasn’t. They reunited, briefly, a few years later. But that hankie-wringer in 1973 was their real valediction, recorded at Strawberry Studios in Stockport, with 10cc as the house band.
Sedaka and Greenfield were old school hit-makers for New York music publishers before the Fab Four changed the rules of the game. Old school suits fits James Anderson and Stuart Broad. The grumpy Lancastrian turns 41 on Sunday. The pretty boy blew out 37 candles last month. It’s time for one song more, the one that says ‘tra la days are over now…’
Fourteen years they have bowled together for England, and what hits they enjoyed! Anderson goes into his 183rd Test match with 689 feathers in his cap. Broad took his 600th wicket at Old Trafford last week, in his 165th appearance. Together they have taken more Test wickets than any pair in the game’s history.
It's likely the colonel will soldier on. He’s been full of beans this summer. It’s possible the brigadier will play until he has taken his 700th wicket. You’re a long time retired, and Anderson used his Telegraph column this week to declare his availability until they take his sweater.
So the old-timers will trot out at the Oval, where England must win to draw the series. But anybody bold enough to put a few bob on their coming this way again should prepare for a spell in the poorhouse.
Wordsworth and Coleridge. Rodgers and Hart. Pinky and Perky. Famous partnerships have always accommodated complementary gifts, and personalities unmatched in real life can fuse in other ways. Occasionally, as with McCartney and Lennon, it is those polarities (left/right, tenor/baritone, sweet/sour) which provide the seeds of success.
Anderson first played for England as a one-day bowler in 2002, and made a strong impression at the World Cup in South Africa the following spring. He graduated to Tests 20 years ago, but then suffered reverses of form and fitness that knocked the stuffing out of him. He was told to remodel his action (he was looking at his boots when he released the ball), and there were the kind of injuries which afflict many young men who want to bowl fast.
When England won the Ashes in 2005 under Michael Vaughan’s captaincy, the fast bowling was done by Steve Harmison, Andrew Flintoff, Simon Jones and Matthew Hoggard. It was a fine attack, and it took Anderson a further three years to get much of a peep. But when Vaughan decided, on a tour of New Zealand in 2008, that Anderson deserved a recall, and gave him the new ball, he proved himself worthy of the summons.
Broad had made his Test debut in Sri Lanka a few months before. He was a willowy, floppy-haired youth, not long out of Oakham School, yet how appearances can deceive. At first a few judges thought he did little with the ball, and wasn’t particularly quick. Two dozen Tests max, they said. I know, because I was one of them.
His declaration of intent came against Australia at the Oval in 2009. England needed to win that match to take the series 2-1, and thanks in large part to Broad’s hostile bowling on the second afternoon that is what they did. Jonathan Trott made a century on debut in England’s second innings, but it was the pretty one’s five-wicket haul on a frantic Friday which set up the victory. His victims included Ricky Ponting, Michael Clarke, and Mike Hussey, so perhaps the wickets should have counted double.
He came of age that afternoon, roaring in from the Vauxhall end in a manner he has come to make his own. Most splendidly, of course, at Trent Bridge in 2015, when he took eight for 15 against the Australians, and went in for some spectacular gurning. That was what perfumiers might call Essence of Broad. He’s a showman, and the bowling is only part of the show.
Broad’s achievement in breaching the 600 wicket mark is no less remarkable than his pal’s in standing on the brink of 700. They have both showed extraordinary resilience in playing for as long as they have, and (a lesson to others) wanting to play. Even now, all passion spent, they are ready for another crack at Australia.
In time they will polish their medals. For the time being we who only watch have memories of our own to cherish, and one of those tra la days came on the Saturday of the Lord’s Test against India in 2011. In the hour after lunch Anderson and Broad bowled flat out against the broad bats of Rahul Dravid and Sachin Tendulkar, and what gripping cricket it was. Two great bowlers tested two great batsmen, with honour satisfied.
England eventually won by 196 runs, and Kevin Pietersen, who made a double century, was man of the match. We need not bother with such trifles. Anderson and Broad were responsible for the most memorable session of play, and they carried 14 wickets away from Lord’s, five falling Anderson’s way on the final afternoon. The crowd saw the best of him that day.
The facts of these two record-breaking careers are there for all to see, if stats are your thing. But the pleasure of cricket can never be found in measurement. Should you doubt that, look up the records of Jacques Kallis and Mark Waugh and then consider which one you would rather see walk to the crease.
At some stage this weekend a full house at the Oval will see the grump and the gurner bowl together for the last time. Neither has to speak, for they have said everything we need to know throughout two decades of toil and triumph. And, as Sedaka and Greenfield knew, ‘words will only make us cry’.