Jimmy Anderson's Recent Contributions

There's been a lot of talk about whether Jimmy Anderson is nearing the end of his career or not. Opinions vary from saying he could play for another 5 years to he should have retired before this English summer. So, rather than getting into all that specifically, I thought it was worth just having a quick look at his recent contributions, and why such discussions are happening.

Let's ignore his actual age for the moment, and just look at the numbers themselves. We can look at two key metrics:

• Bowling Average (defined as runs per wicket taken)
• Wickets Per Match (defined as wickets per match played)

There is also a third metric, a combination of these, that can be useful, which I'll call bowling rating here. This is just the geometric mean of these two, but done as WPM and 1/average, as this means that they scale in the same direction. This makes this third metric, in effect, the square root of WPM/average.

We can then show Jimmy's career in terms of an average of his most recent 10 tests for a given age, these are below, with stats up to date as of today (ie mid the current test):

• Bowling Average
• Wickets per Match
• Bowling Rating

So, while his average is being maintained at a good level, the question is over how many wickets he's actually taking. This, realistically, is a function of how long he can bowl for, and builds into question marks about his age. It's certainly not terminal at this point, but it should be considered a genuine concern for him.

This all said, of all teams, England are likely the most likely to be able to carry such a player at this point, as they usually play 4 seamers and a spinner anyhow.

I would also note that discussions should try to avoid a 'last test' focus. Jimmy has had a good match, but that shouldn't make question marks disappear, just as a couple of bad tests shouldn't dominate that discussion either. It's these trends that should be the focus in such discussions, unless you feel like picking Marcus North as a key spinner for a tour of India context, though a bit out of date at this point.

submitted by /u/Anothergen
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