Anderson and Bopara proving T20 can be one for golden oldies

The ball pitches just outside off stump, nibbles sufficiently off the surface to tempt the outside edge and nestles into the hands of wide first slip, prompting bowler James Anderson to raise his right arm in customary celebration.

The second delivery of Lancashire’s T20 Blast trip to Worcestershire on Friday night was both warmingly familiar and curiously unusual. Returning to short-form cricket for the first time in 11 years, the majority of Anderson’s 10 wickets have, in fact, been caught either in the ring or on the boundary edge.

There have been plenty of them: Friday’s figures of three for 32 followed the 3-17 and 3-31 he had already claimed in a wonderful T20 revival. Only two bowlers have taken more wickets at a better average and economy rate this campaign than the hitherto red-ball specialist, who turns 43 next month.

Hours later, on the other side of the Midlands, Derbyshire ­captain Samit Patel – 41 later this year – delivered a pertinent reminder of his abilities to former ­employers Nottinghamshire with a match-­winning spell of 3-14.

Just a few games ago, Patel had struck 83 against Northamptonshire, only to be upstaged by his one-time England contemporary, 40-year-old Ravi Bopara, whose unbeaten 84 was a second match-winning innings in as many outings. “T20 is an old man’s game,” said Bopara afterwards.

Mere whippersnappers in comparison, Yorkshire’s Dawid Malan, 37, and Northamptonshire’s Ben Sanderson, 36, top the run-scoring and wicket-taking charts respectively, approaching the halfway stage of this year’s Blast.

For Anderson, a white-ball resurgence that few saw coming has even prompted the admission of a regret, this week lamenting: “I wouldn’t change anything in my Test career, but it would have been nice to have played a little bit more [T20] over the last 10 years.”

Like Anderson – who spent much of last year working as an England bowling coach after international retirement was thrust upon him – Bopara is straddling different worlds in his fifth decade. Named head coach of Karachi Kings in the Pakistan Super League earlier this year, he is now one of the most high-profile English coaches in global franchise cricket. Yet eight days after guiding Karachi in their final PSL match, he faced Yorkshire as a Northamptonshire player.

Bopara and Patel are the only players to have featured in every T20 Blast season, with Bopara now on 485 official T20 appearances, placing him eighth on the all-time list.

“I feel like I’m going through the generations,” he told The Cricketer last year. “My game gets better as I get older because I know more about it. If you train hard, keep hitting balls and have the desire to train, then I don’t think age can really stop you.”

Proof is currently evident all over the country.