With Virat Kohli and James Anderson missing from the upcoming India tour of England due to both greats hanging up their boots from the longest format, the series looks to have lost a bit of sheen. Former England opener Nick Knight said that the Indian batting lineup bereft of Kohli and Rohit Sharma will be glad that Anderson wasn’t around anymore but also added that England had made the right call in looking to the future.
“England will move forward now. And they’ve got plenty of talent, plenty of abilities like all these guys. But I’m certainly sure that India would be happy to see him getting retired now. And I think the last series that Indian won (in England) was in 2007, probably Jimmy was part of that series as well. So, he’s been a constant,” Knight told PTI.
Anderson not only defied age to last as long as he did for a fast bowler, the hallmark of his career was relentless accuracy and exemplary control over his ability to swing the ball both ways.
Courtesy these special skills, Anderson was able to exploit Kohli’s weakness around the off-stump in the 2014 series before the latter overcame those mental demons four years later to “dominate” the world’s most prolific pacer in the longest format.
Knight, meanwhile, feels the timing to rename the trophy of the upcoming series after Sachin Tendulkar and Anderson could not be better.
“It’s a very, very fine tribute. And the right sort of timing for the Jimmy Anderson-Tendulkar trophy. Just the kind of right thing to do in such an iconic series. I played with Jimmy when he first came in. I was sort of someone at the back end of my career. And he was just starting out. You could see right from the start he was a lad who had great control of the swinging ball,” he said.
“And very little discernible difference between the one that went in and the one that went away. I think that of all the little skills he had, technically that was a great skill. It’s very difficult to predict which way the ball was going out of his hand. Very similar action as well. Did not give away tell-tale signs. So, he was very difficult to face. Obviously, he had enough nip and pace as well. Yeah, I mean, obviously the numbers look after themselves,” added Knight.
(With agency inputs)