MANCHESTER: James Anderson returns on his Old Trafford home ground to lead an ageing England attack in a must-win fourth Ashes Test.

       It is the only change for Ben Stokes’ men, 2-1 down with two to play.

       England have dropped Ollie Robinson, who suffered a back spasm as the hosts won the third Test by three wickets at Headingley.

       Anderson is reinstated just a fortnight short of his 41st birthday for the match starting on Wednesday.

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       Anderson’s 688 wickets are the most by any paceman in Test history. Only spinners Muttiah Muralitharan and Shane Warne are ahead of the Lancashire swing bowler.

       But Anderson managed just three wickets as England fell 2-0 behind. He is now, however, set to be the cornerstone of the oldest pace attack in an Ashes match since the Australia line-up of 1928.

       That was the last time either side deployed four seamers aged 33 or above, with Stuart Broad (37), Chris Woakes (34) and express quick Mark Wood (33) joining Anderson in England’s seam-bowling quartet.

       “When you’re quality performer like Jimmy has been for the last 10 years, he is going to be disappointed that he’s not contributed to the team like he normally does,” Stokes said during a pre-match press conference on Tuesday. “But I did say to him ‘even if you’re not taking wickets like you want to be doing, at the other end you see the pressure you’re putting on the opposition’.

       “He holds an end up without that being his main obligation with the ball. You don’t get as many wickets as him without having the odd bad game here and there — there’s no issues whatsoever with Jimmy.”

       Stokes said that forecast bad weather in Manchester could make England even more aggressive as they bid to keep their Ashes hopes alive.

       With heavy rain forecast on the fourth and fifth days in the city, England may have to up their tempo while trying to force a win.

       “You never want to look too much into the weather but in the position we find ourselves in, we find we might have to,” noted the all-rounder. “We know we have to win this game to take it to the last game for us to have a chance of getting the urn back.

       “Going into the last game 2-0 down, we knew we had to win that so I think that helped us a little bit. Maybe again with the weather that’s predicted, it might bring more out of us again knowing that we might have to push the game on even more than we normally do.

       “We’ll just have to wait and see. If the weather is what it’s predicted to be, we might have to.”

       AUSTRALIA RETAIN WARNER

       Opener David Warner is set to be included for the penultimate Test despite his lack in form, Australian captain Pat Cummins said on Tuesday, but spinner Todd Murphy could be squeezed out to accommodate both all-rounders, Mitchell Marsh and Cameron Green.

       Warner’s place looked uncertain after his double failure in the third Test at Headingley where the opener managed a total of five runs and fell to Broad in both innings.

       “Josh will come in for Scott Boland, and the top order will stay the same,” Cummins told reporters on the eve of the match.

       “Davey (Warner) didn’t have his best game last week at Headingley, but prior to that, he has looked really good.

       “He has had three 50-run (opening) partnerships, which can be rare over in England.”

       Replacing an injured Green at Headingley, Marsh smashed a century and grabbed a couple of wickets to make it difficult for the selectors to drop him.

       With Green having recovered from a hamstring strain, left-arm spinner Murphy may have to sit out having bowled only 9.3 overs across two innings at Headingley where England won by three wickets to stay alive in the series.

       With rain forecast for the last two days of the Test, Cummins was fine with the idea of not playing a frontline spinner.

       “Part of the conversation is how do two all-rounders fit in, is spin going to be important this week?” the Australia captain said. “We’ve played games with one quick, we’ve played some games with heaps of quicks. It’s all really conditions-based.

       “As I said last week about Toddy, I would have loved to bowl him a bit more but there wasn’t a heap of overs in the game, the ball seemed to swing and seam a little bit.

       “So that’s certainly something to weigh up this week.”

       Published in Dawn, July 19th, 2023