In an extract from Test Match Special Diary, we hear about the England fast bowler's rush to get to Lord's for his part in Five Live's World Cup final coverage
Florence Welch was standing on the street when a harp player pulled up and got out of a taxi, carrying his instrument.
The singer invited him to play a song and, to this day, he’s still an integral part of Florence and the Machine.
Fifteen years later, Jimmy Anderson is sat backstage at Hyde Park, enraptured with this story of random fortuitous chance and generally enjoying the relaxed rock ’n’ roll vibe that is present at one of London’s biggest gigs of the summer.
Stubbornly ignoring repeated polite suggestions to call it a night and head back to his hotel, England’s all-time leading Test match wicket-taker is having a ball.
The following morning, a slumbering Lancastrian is rudely awoken at 8.30am by a phone call from his hotel receptionist asking if he would like to speak to a ‘Mark Sharman’.
His heart falls and a quick glance at the clock on the wall confirms his worst fears: Anderson is due on air at the World Cup final in less than half an hour – and he’s been woken up by a ‘Hail Mary’ phone call from his producer, known affectionately as ‘Sharky’.
Following an ‘Australian shower’ and liberal dashings of aftershave, ‘the King of the Swingers’ sprints out onto the street, flags a passing taxi and asks to be taken to Lord’s as quickly as humanly possible.
Upon arrival at the Home of Cricket, Anderson encounters more disaster as the required road is closed. Abandoning his cab, he sprints up the street towards the North Gate, realising halfway up that it’s actually quite a good fitness test on a recalcitrant calf muscle that is currently threatening his participation in the forthcoming Test match against Ireland.
Anderson arrived long before England ended their wait for World Cup glory...
Passing rapidly through a mandatory bag search purely on the basis of his 575 Test match wickets, Anderson pelts across the Nursery Ground, dragging his wheelie suitcase right across the square and barely acknowledging England captain Eoin Morgan, who is preparing for the biggest game of his life with coach Paul Collingwood.
Getting to the lifts that take you up to the ground’s iconic Media Centre, Jimmy pushes past five waiting journalists and jumps in, hoping the notoriously unreliable Lord’s lift mechanisms will not let him down on this of all occasions.
They do not, and he sprints through the written press box, up the stairs to the broadcast centre.
At 9.01am he exhaustedly flops into his chair, pulls on a set of headphones and is seamlessly introduced to listeners by his Tailenders cohort Greg James, beginning what will become an 11-hour TMS takeover of BBC Radio 5 Live.
Why? Because it’s the World Cup final. And England might win.
TEST MATCH SPECIAL DIARY: The Full Story of England’s World Cup-Winning and Ashes Summer – From the Best Seat in the House by the TMS Team with Jon Surtees is out now, (Simon & Schuster).