It was hard not to think of another great pair of bowlers, Curtly Ambrose and Courtney Walsh, when the news arrived last Saturday of James Anderson’s decision to join Stuart Broad in retirement from Test cricket soon enough. Some names on the cricket field will be forever linked, as those combinations will be, England’s maestros having taken a record 1,039 wickets in the 138 Tests they played together.
At the Oval in August 2000, there was an assumption that Walsh and Ambrose would stride off into the sunset together, just as we wondered whether that might be the case for Broad and Anderson at the conclusion of the Ashes last year. But only one half did: Ambrose took his leave at the Oval — I