James Anderson refused to rest on his laurels after becoming the first paceman to take 600 Test wickets as he revealed England captain Joe Root wanted him to feature in the Ashes tour of Australia, which begins in November next year.
Anderson became only the fourth bowler after three retired spinners — Sri Lanka’s Muttiah Muralitharan with 800 wickets, Australia’s Shane Warne with 708 and India’s Anil Kumble with 619 — to achieve the feat when he had Pakistan captain Azhar Ali well caught by first slip Root at the Ageas Bowl in Southampton, England, on Tuesday.
Anderson would be nearly 40 when England begin their quest to regain the urn from their arch-rivals.
Photo: AP
Although he has now played a mammoth 156 Tests, Anderson insisted there is no reason why he could not still be a key member of England’s attack Down Under.
“To be honest I’ve chatted to Rooty about this a little bit, and he has said he would like me to be in Australia,” Anderson told reporters after a match marred by bad weather, which ended in a draw to give England a 1-0 win in a three-Test series.
At 38, Anderson — an England international for 17 years — is already at an age where many pacemen of previous generations have long since retired.
Yet his hunger for wickets shows no sign of being sated, even though he has already enjoyed the rare experience for an England cricketer of starring in a victorious Ashes campaign in Australia, in 2010 to 2011.
“I don’t see any reason why I can’t be [involved],” Anderson said.
“I’m working hard on my fitness all the time, working hard on my game. I didn’t bowl as well as I’d have liked for the whole summer, but this Test match I was really on it and I feel like I’ve still got stuff to offer this team,” said Anderson, who finished with match figures of 7-101 following his 29th five-wicket Test haul in the first innings. “As long as I still feel like that I think I’ll keep going.”
Revelations of positive doping tests for nearly two dozen Chinese swimmers that went unpunished sparked an intense flurry of accusations and legal threats between the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the head of the US drug-fighting organization, who has long been one of WADA’s fiercest critics. WADA on Saturday said it was turning to legal counsel to address a statement released by US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) CEO Travis Tygart, who said WADA and anti-doping authorities in China swept positive tests “under the carpet by failing to fairly and evenly follow the global rules that apply to everyone else in the world.” The
Taiwanese judoka Yang Yung-wei on Saturday won silver in the men’s under-60kg category at the Asian Judo Championships in Hong Kong. Nicknamed the “judo heartthrob” in Taiwan, the Olympic silver-medalist missed out on his first Asian Championships gold when he lost to Japanese judoka Taiki Nakamura in the finals. Yang defeated three opponents on Saturday to reach the final after receiving a bye through the round of 32. He first topped Laotian Soukphaxay Sithisane in the round of 16 with two seoi nage (over-the-shoulder throws), then ousted Indian Vijay Kumar Yadav in the quarter-finals with his signature ude hishigi sankaku gatame (triangular armlock). He
RALLY: It was only the second time the Taiwanese has partnered with Kudermetova, and the match seemed tight until they won seven points in a row to take the last set 10-2 Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching and Russia’s Veronika Kudermetova on Sunday won the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix women’s doubles final in Stuttgart, Germany. The pair defeated Norway’s Ulrikke Eikeri and Estonia’s Ingrid Neel 4-6, 6-3, 10-2 in a tightly contested match at the WTA 500 tournament. Chan and Kudermetova fell 4-6 in the first set after having their serve broken three times, although they played increasingly well. They fought back in the second set and managed to break their opponents’ serve in the eighth game to triumph 6-3. In the tiebreaker, Chan and Kudermetova took a 3-0 lead before their opponents clawed back two points, but
Taiwanese gymnast Lee Chih-kai failed to secure an Olympic berth in the pommel horse following a second-place finish at the last qualifier in Doha on Friday, a performance that Lee and his coach called “unconvincing.” The Tokyo Olympics silver medalist finished runner-up in the final after scoring 6.6 for degree of difficulty and 8.800 for execution for a combined score of 15.400. That was just 0.100 short of Jordan’s Ahmad Abu Al Soud, who had qualified for the event in Paris before the Apparatus World Cup series in Qatar’s capital. After missing the final rounds in the first two of four qualifier