LAWRENCE BOOTH: Time waits for no man not even Jimmy Anderson – England’ leading wicket-taker 

Critics of Bazball have joked that it feels blasphemous to criticise Ben Stokes’s England, but an even more heretical thought is creeping up on us. How much more will we get to see of Jimmy Anderson?

On the fourth day of this bizarre second Ashes Test, the answer was: not very much. And it wasn’t simply because England spent the afternoon answering Australia’s short-ball barrage with one of their own, a sledgehammer tactic at odds with Anderson’s scalpel.

Trying to predict the date of his retirement has long been a mug’s game, and it feels like forever that the sub-clause ‘who turns 41 in July’ has been a journalistic staple. Saturday, for what it’s worth, was the start of July.

One stat doing the rounds reckoned the combined age of Anderson and Stuart Broad – 77 years 337 days – made them Test cricket’s oldest opening pair since 1951, when South African batsmen Eric Rowan and Dudley Nourse, who never took a Test wicket between them, rolled their arms over as England chased 16 at Lord’s.

England’s veterans are used to such number-crunching, but there is no denying Anderson has cut a peripheral figure this summer, and time waits for no man – whether he’s the leading wicket-taker in his country’s history or not.

Jimmy Anderson has cut a peripheral figure during the current Ashes series with Australia

The combined age of Anderson and Stuart Broad (left) is the oldest for an opening pair since 1951

Stokes gave him the honour of the day’s first full over (Ollie Robinson first had to complete the innings’ 46th, interrupted by Friday’s rain). But Anderson was soon being driven past mid-off by the elegant Usman Khawaja, then creamed for three off-side fours in four balls by Steve Smith.

After three overs costing 16, he was removed from the attack. There were two more overs before lunch, which went for seven. And that, for the rest of the day, was that. Of the 27.5 overs England sent down between lunch and tea, Anderson bowled precisely none.

Then there was the catch he put down at backward point to spare Travis Head a golden duck – straight at him, throat-high, meat and drink for one of the game’s best fast-bowling fielders. The previous day, he had allowed a pull from Khawaja to burst through his hands at midwicket. Khawaja, 19 at the time, went on to top-score with 77.

If fielding is any kind of barometer of morale, this was not good news. And it summed up two games in which Anderson has managed just three wickets at 75, calling into question the assumption he would easily convert his pre-series tally of 685 wickets into 700 – a threshold crossed only by Muttiah Muralitharan and Shane Warne.

Luck has not always been with him. At Edgbaston, sharper wicketkeeping from Jonny Bairstow would have brought him the wicket of Alex Carey in the first over of the third day, and of Khawaja in the first over of Australia’s fourth-innings chase. Had Khawaja been caught five runs into his eventual 65, England would probably have won.

But Anderson has spent most of his 20 years at the top level creating another chance soon after, and those chances are refusing to materialise.

By his own admission, Anderson was below-par during the first Test, and later used his newspaper column to describe the Edgbaston surface as being his own personal ‘Kryptonite’. Ominously, he added: ‘If all the pitches are like that, I’m done in the Ashes series.’ It did not sound like a statement designed to lift flagging spirits.

It was striking that Stokes decided not to call on him when the second new ball became available during Edgbaston’s tense finale. Dead pitch or otherwise, no swing or not, the situation seemed to cry out for his class and skill.

Earlier in that game, too, Stokes had looked elsewhere. After his bold declaration on the first evening left England with a few overs at Australia’s openers, the new ball was taken by Broad and Robinson. And on the third day of this game, Anderson suffered the indignity of Bairstow standing up to the stumps.

The veteran seamer let slip two comfortable catching opportunities in the second Ashes Test

England’s following series is a gruelling five-match tour of India that does not favour his swing bowling style

Could we see the Anderson farewell tour at Old Trafford later in this series at his home ground

Both the short- and the long-term are uncertain. It is hard to see how he can be picked for Thursday’s third Test at Headingley, where England hope to turn to Mark Wood. And his record at The Oval – which hosts the series finale – is his worst for any of this country’s nine Test venues.

England’s next Test series after the Ashes is a gruelling five-match tour of India early next year – not a trip that has Anderson’s name written all over it.

Whisper it, but might we witness a farewell on home turf in Manchester, with the most skilful bowler in England’s history operating from the end named after him? Or might the end come even more quickly?

It is a mark of the astonishing standards he has set himself that it feels disrespectful even to wonder.