New Lancashire captain James Anderson on hating the hundred and a promotion push in the County Championship

There was a point when Sir James Anderson felt his chances of captaining Lancashire were over. “Once I got to 40, I thought maybe it’s gone,” he smiled. But a cricketer who has redefined what is possible for the middle-aged was still opening the bowling in Test cricket when his fifth decade began. He started to lead Lancashire part-way through last season. Now he enters a first year as club captain; one in which he turns 44 in July.

Anderson may be the oldest swinger in town – the oldest wobble-seamer, too – but if references to his age are inescapable, he invokes it in self-deprecating fashion. What about pre-season? “The running side of it, maybe not trying to sprint, keep up with 17-year-old lads and just do what I need to do to be fit for a game.” As he contemplates a schedule he deemed “absolutely crazy”, he reflected: “It’s so difficult for a bowler, let alone a 43-year-old bowler, to play every game of the summer. My heart is saying, ‘definitely’; my head’s like, ‘it’ll be a massive challenge’.”

And yet he will try. Why is he still going? An enduring love of the game, which is something he hopes to bring into his captaincy. So, too, a sense of drive. No other fast bowler in the history of the game has taken 700 Test wickets; Anderson is 100 clear of his closest rival, and former teammate Stuart Broad. Broad, four years his junior, is in the commentary box now. Anderson will be opening the bowling at Wantage Road in Northampton this week. His latest ambition is promotion, to rescue Lancashire from the wilderness of Division 2.

Keaton Jennings started last season in charge before stepping down, while Marcus Harris then had a brief stint. Lancashire’s poor year brought Dale Benkenstein’s departure as coach. No wonder, then, that Anderson said: “If I’m still captain by the end of the season, I think that’ll be positive.”

But if he is, then he can dream. The only captain to lead Lancashire to the County Championship since 1950 was a veteran fast bowler, Glen Chapple. “I think there are times throughout the winter where I maybe thought about what if we get promoted and we’ve got a chance to push for the championship next year. Would I want to be involved in that? And of course I would,” said Anderson. “And then there are other times when I wake up and I struggle to walk to the toilet in the morning and think maybe I can’t get another year out of my body.”

He has got far more than felt feasible. “I probably wouldn’t have thought I’d be still playing at the age,” he said. “It was five minutes since I was signing Lancashire at 18.” He played for England at 20, and at 41. He reinvented himself last summer, excelling in the Blast. He got picked up for The Hundred. He won’t be returning to that.

“It was a mixture of hating every minute of The Hundred last year, if I can say that, and especially being captain this year, I think it’s really important that I focus on being as fit as I can be for the four-day stuff. I want to play in the Blast as well again,” Anderson said. “When The Hundred’s on, I’m hopefully going to be on holiday somewhere.”

It is a sign of the significance of the captaincy. It puts Anderson in a distinguished lineage, a successor to Clive Lloyd and David Lloyd, Brian Statham and Wasim Akram. His name is on many an honours board; now it has been inscribed on the list of Lancashire captains. “A huge honour,” Anderson said. “It’s such a prestigious club, with a lot of history, so to be a captain of the four-day side is a very proud thing for me.”

In one respect, few have been better qualified. Anderson has the small matter of 188 Test matches behind him; he has first-hand experience of every England captain from Nasser Hussain to Ben Stokes. He will nevertheless be his own man.

“I wouldn’t say I’m modelling myself on anyone, no,” he said. “I feel fortunate I’ve played under a lot of captains, both here and with England. I feel like I grew into a leader in the England team throughout towards the back end of my career as well. So I think having gathered all that information throughout my career, then I am trying to just be the captain that I think I want to be.”

Part of that lies in the results, part of it in the relish for the sport that means he has deferred retirement, time and again. “I want the team to get promoted this year,” he said. “I want all the players to have fun doing it. Remember why we started playing cricket because we love the game.” County cricket, he knows, can feel like a treadmill. “So to try and bring guys back to, ‘it’s not just a job, it’s something that we love doing’.”

Anderson is naturally reserved but, as coach Steven Croft – a former teammate two years his junior – noted, he has become more loquacious and, when a cricketer of his stature speaks, everyone else listens. Anderson nevertheless added: “When you’re in a team, a successful team in particular, everyone talks to each other.”

Lancashire were not a successful team last season. They did not win in their first eight matches in Division 2. A trouble taking 20 wickets was an issue, along with the flatness of the Old Trafford pitches. Anderson hopes winter signing Ajeet Singh Dale and the rapid Mitch Stanley can make a difference. “If you look at our attack over the last two or three years, we’ve been lacking that sort of X-factor pace,” he said.

Which, in his mid-forties, he cannot be expected to provide himself now. Even with the loss of the injured Australian fast bowler Mitch Perry, Anderson hopes Lancashire will have a battery of seamers who can rotate at the end of the season. Even for a man of his longevity, it is unrealistic to expect him to be an ever-present with a heavy workload. “Or we’d pray for a really hot summer and we can play four spinners, but I don’t think that’ll happen,” he smiled. Probably not, especially in Manchester; but for man who has kept going for longer than anyone else, for the 43-year-old with 704 Test wickets, there is a new target: promotion.