James Anderson becomes the first seamer to 700 Test wickets

As the first seam bowler to reach 700 Test wickets against India in Dharamsala on Saturday morning, James Anderson set new records in the foothills of the Himalayas.

The moment arrived in the third morning’s fourth over when Anderson forced Kuldeep Yadav to give a thin edge to the keeper for thirty runs, helping his team bowl India out for 477, a 259-run deficit after one over.

Only spinners Shane Warne (708 wickets) and Muthiah Muralidaran (800 wickets) have taken more wickets in Test cricket history than Anderson (700 wickets), who is the third bowler to reach that milestone overall.

Anderson, who is playing his 187th Test match of a career that started against Zimbabwe at Lord’s in May 2003, some 21 years ago, is the most experienced specialist bowler of any kind.

The Dharamsala Test began with Anderson at 698 wickets; shortly after lunch on the second day, he advanced to 699 when he sent Shubman Gill through the gate for 110.

Alastair Cook, a studio pundit for TNT Sports and a former Test captain for Australia, praised Anderson’s longevity and talent.

“It is an incredible accomplishment,” Cook exclaimed, having led Anderson in 49 Test matches. “It is amazing how driven he is to improve and win cricket matches for England. His brilliance is a joke, as are the physical obstacles he has surmounted to play almost 190 Test matches.”

With 604 wickets at the end of the previous summer’s Ashes, Anderson’s longtime England colleague Stuart Broad is the next most prolific seam bowler in Test history, but he is about 100 wickets ahead of Anderson.

When Anderson hit the penultimate ball of the match at The Oval in 2018, he broke the previous record held by Glenn McGrath, who had amassed 563 wickets as a Test seamer, by dismissing Mohammed Shami of India. With the dismissal of Pakistan’s Azhar Ali in Southampton in 2020, he proceeded to pass 600 wickets.

With Kuldeep’s wicket, Anderson’s tally of wickets against India stands at 149, the greatest against any Test opponent. Now, 44 of them have appeared in 17 Tests held in India, with an average score of 30.27. Of his 700 wickets, he has taken 434 wickets at home and 266 wickets abroad, including 92 in Asia, at an average of 27.51.

At Lord’s in May 2003, Anderson took his maiden wicket in a Test match against Mark Vermeulen of Zimbabwe. Since then, Jacques Kallis of South Africa (ranked 100th), Peter Siddle of Australia (ranked 200th), Peter Fulton of New Zealand (ranked 300th and 400th), and Kraigg Brathwaite of the West Indies (ranked 500th) have been his notable victims.