When Fred Trueman became the first man to claim 300 Test wickets, back in 1964, he was asked if his record would ever be beaten. "Aye," Trueman is believed to have replied. "But whoever does will be bloody tired."
Trueman was from the north Yorkshire town of Stainton, which sounds like a northern English town from a Monty Python sketch about open-pit mining. A little over two hours southwest is Burnley, where in the universe of this sketch whatever was mined in Stainton is taken to be fed into furnaces that billow grey smoke into the skies.
In reality, what Burnley produced is a seam bowler whose wickets have come like coils of steel out of a production line - in industrial quantities. Quantities that, as he nears a Test wicket tally of 700, seemed beyond the furthest bounds of imagination for a seam bowler, even as few as five years ago.
Recommended Read
Because this is about James Anderson, there will of course be that debate. He's great, sure, but is he really that great? What can be agreed upon, however, is that that the debate has raged for an exceptionally long period, now stretching decades. More accurately, Anderson himself has done what he does for so long, that he has made that debate stretch. Many who threw shade years ago are likely the same crowd that throws it now, because it is difficult to imagine he has picked up new detractors. Instead he has picked up about 400 wickets since the debate's inception.
It is now possible to mark up the lives of his newest team-mates entirely in Anderson career milestones. Shoaib Bashir was in utero when James Anderson took 5 for 73 at Lord's on debut, possibly still peeing himself when Anderson dismissed Jacques Kallis to take his 100th wicket, seven-years old when Anderson took 24 wickets at 26.04 in England's 3-1 Ashes victory in Australia, likely polishing up his 12 times table when Anderson became England's highest Test wicket-taker in 2015, and not even close to driving age when Anderson surpassed Glenn McGrath to become the most successful fast bowler in Test history in 2018.
It is a career truly staggering in scale for a seam bowler, who requires virtually the entire body to be in working order to function at near its peak. Anderson has bowled over 5000 deliveries more than any other quick, watched England cricket go through several cycles of giddy highs, haunting lows, and even more rebrandings. No fewer than 100 Test cricketers have debuted for England after him. He has also outlasted six UK Prime Ministers, although perhaps this is not such an achievement.