Jimmy Anderson: England's freak of nature looking down from Test cricket’s loftiest peak - Chris Waters

James Anderson is back on top of the world Test rankings some five months short of his 41st birthday.

It is, by any measure, a remarkable achievement.

At an age when most batsmen, let alone fast-medium bowlers, have long since been put out to grass, Anderson is still grazing on the fields of the world’s finest grounds, still dismissing the best batsmen that cricket has to offer.

It is the sixth time in his storied career that Anderson has topped the Test bowling rankings and, because of his age, the most astonishing.

Forty-year-olds simply do not look down from such lofty peaks - unless, of course, they happen to be freaks in the best sense of that word.

Anderson is a freak - a freak of nature.

His seven-wicket haul in the first Test against New Zealand in Mount Maunganui, which lifted him back to the summit, means that he is now just 18 short of 700 in Tests.

Only Muttiah Muralitharan (800) and the late, great Shane Warne (708) took more, spin bowling freaks nonpareil.

Most statistics/rankings tend to go in one eye and out of the other these days, so prevalent and pervasive are the endless drone of numbers.

But Anderson’s achievement really does stand out, despite the fact that it might prove to be short-lived, with India’s Ravichandran Ashwin and Australia’s Pat Cummins breathing down his neck on the rankings chart.

Just to get there at all is an incredible effort and proof that we may never see the likes of Anderson again.

He is the oldest player to top the rankings since Australia’s Clarrie Grimmett, who formed a famous leg-spinning partnership with Bill O’Reilly in the 1930s.

Anderson, whose own partnership with Stuart Broad set a new record in Mount Maunganui for the most wickets taken by two bowlers playing together in Tests (now 1,009), is a remarkable specimen in more ways than one.

His longevity essentially boils down to three things: first, and most obviously, his talent; second, his absolute commitment to fitness and diet; and, third, his scholarly obsession with fast-medium bowling - no one has worked more assiduously at perfecting their craft.

For Anderson is a craftsman first and foremost, one with the ability to move the ball in and out as though controlled by a string.

Factor in a fiercely competitive spirit, a love of playing for England and the players with whom he plays, and you essentially have the complete package - not to mention living proof that age is just a number, or, as the American author and humorist Mark Twain put it, “an issue of mind over matter… if you don’t mind, it doesn’t matter.”

Inevitably, as the years come and go but the track record, unbelievably, only seems to get better, people wonder when Anderson will finally call it a day.

Since turning 35 about three million years ago, the ‘Burnley Express’ - a nickname that perhaps suggests some second-rate wagon that often runs into trouble in bad weather on the Pennines - has taken 202 wickets in 56 Tests at the ridiculous average of 20.56.

A bit like Ryan Sidebottom, the ex-Yorkshire and England left-armer, who seemed to get better the older he got, to the point that were he still playing now he might be high in the rankings himself, Anderson’s performances defy all logic.

So much so, the more appropriate conjecture might well be this: why would Anderson want to retire? At this rate, he’ll have well over 1,000 Test wickets by the age of 45, even if a body containing not an ounce of fat might well have got its protestations through to the brain by then that the time might have come to call it a day.

Might this Ashes summer be Anderson’s swansong?

It would be appropriate, if nothing else.

What better, perhaps, than to walk off alongside his old sparring partner Stuart Broad in front of cheering crowds at the Oval in July, the old enemy having just been whitewashed 5-0?

Broad, 37 in June, is no spring chicken either and fifth on the list of all-time Test wicket-takers with 571, separated from third-placed Anderson by Anil Kumble.

Anderson has benefited from not playing one-day international cricket since 2015, placing less strain on the body and mind, and from not playing any List A cricket since 2019.

His last T20 match was way back in 2014, when he was a losing finalist for Lancashire against Warwickshire, his figures of 0-52 standing out somewhat painfully on the scorecard in a four-run defeat.

Anderson’s last T20 international was in 2009, but it is in first-class cricket where he has always excelled, in the Test arena where he has shone the brightest.

Everyone knows how good he is, but, just in case we are ever minded to take him for granted, only a jewel could be No 1 at James Anderson’s age.