Anderson-Broad Duo A Cut Above Rival Fast Bowling Great Pairs Owing To Sheer Consistency, Longevity Of Performing At Highest Level

While Anderson-Broad duo spearheaded the English seam attack with distinction, they also had the luxury of a strong support cast which played the third's seamer role to perfection.. Tearaway speedster Steve Finn, Chris Tremlett, Ryan Sidebottom and Simon Jones lent depth to a formidable English pace battery for over a decade.

The moisture laden conditions in the British Isles make it conducive for seam bowling and serve as the perfect settings for the seam and swing bowlers to operate in full steam by getting the ball to move off the air and dart off those decks covered with a nice green tinge of grass. For over a century, seam bowling and English Cricket go hand in hand ..England teams have been blessed with some of the all time fast bowling greats of the game who were hailed as the best of their eras. If the English had Fred Trueman, Brian Statham and Alec Bedser in the 50s and 60s; Chris Old, John Snow and John Lever in the 70s, they had the fearsome seam bowling duo of Bob Willis and Ian Botham in the 80s. The 90s saw the likes of Angus Fraser, Chris Lewis, Phil DeFreitas, Daren Gough, Andrew Caddick and Dominick Cork form the nucleas of a potent English seam attack in Test cricket. The turn of the century witnessed perhaps one of the strongest English seam bowling unit with Stephen Harmison, Matthew Hoggard, Andrew Flintoff and James Anderson forming a lethal pace battery and contributing to England becoming the number one ranked team in red ball cricket. Soon after Anderson made a telling impact with the new ball and rose in stature, a tall and lanky speedster from Nottingham joint in the English pace battery. His 6 foot six inch height made him a strike weapon on the bouncy tracks where he extracted steep bounce from nagging lengths to wreck havoc among batting lineups. He played second fiddle to the most illustrious seniors but soon became the perfect foil to James Anderson and formed the greatest seam bowling unit for English cricket...He was none other that Stuart Broad, the son of former England cricketer Chris Broad. Over the last decade, James Anderson and Stuart Broad have been the behemoths of the English pace lineup..While the Cook, Bell, Petersen, Strauss,Trott, Root and Bairstow scored prolifically with the willow across all conditions, the Broad-Anderson duo were the mean machines which wrecked havoc among the best of batting lineups and became chief architects in making the English side an unconquerable force on home soil. While Anderson-Broad duo spearheaded the English seam attack with distinction, they also had the luxury of a strong support cast which played the third's seamer role to perfection.. Tearaway speedster Steve Finn, Chris Tremlett, Ryan Sidebottom and Simon Jones lent depth to a formidable English pace battery for over a decade...Medium pacers like Tim Bresnan and Paul Collingwood were handy to have around for. We must not forget the contributions made by frontline English spinners like Ashley Giles, Monty Panesar, Graeme Swann, Adil Rashid and even Moeen Ali who chipped in with wickets when the seamers were not effective on low and turning tracks outside the United Kingdom. As Anderson and Broad got into their 30s, a new crop of seam bowlers emerged who took a bit of the heavy work load off the veterans shoulders..The emergence of Mark Wood, Ben Stokes, Chris Woakes and lately Jofra Archer once again established England's credentials as a top notch seam unit in red ball cricket. England played a bit of a gamble by turning both their pace spearheads into Test specialist. While both James Anderson and Stuart boasted of decent track records in ODIs, the think tank kept their legs fresh for enduring the grind of Test cricket and got the likes of Mark Wood, David Willey, Liam Plunkett, Chris Jordan, Jake Ball as their frontline speedsters in white ball cricket. Top ranked Test sides over the last decade had one thing in common, a power-packed fast bowling unit .. South Africa (Dale Steyn, Morne Morkel, Vernon Philander and Kagiso Rabada), Australia (Mitchell Starc, Josh Hazelwood, Pat Cummins, Mitch Johnson, Peter Siddle), India (Mohammad Shami, Ishant Sharma, Jasprit Bumrah and Umesh Yadav) and New Zealand (Trent Boult, Tim Southee, Matt Henry and Neil Wagner) have all had potent pace batteries led by outright strike bowlers .. What really makes the Anderson-Broad pair stand out among their biggest contemporaries and rivals is that they played injury free for a much longer duration courtesy their supreme fitness levels and their dedicated work ethics towards training. Meanwhile the likes of Dale Steyn, Mitchell Starc were certainly more menacing than the English duo with better strike rates but were plagued by spree of injuries and thereby lacked the consistency and longevity to play at the peaks of their prowess. With over 895-wickets in 117 Tests between them, Anderson and Broad stand head and shoulders above those pairs who are hailed among the greatest fast bowling duos over the history of Test cricket. The duo has gone past the likes of legendary fast bowling pairs  - Windies Curtly Ambrose and Courtney Walsh (762 in 95 Tests), Wasim Akram and Waqar Younis (559 in 61 Tests Pakistan), Dale Steyn and Morne Morkel (552 South Africa), besides other Mcrath-Lee (Australia), Allan Donald-Shaun Pollock, Ntini-Pollock (South Africa).. There will be endless debates over Wasim-Waqar, Starc Hazelwood, Steyn Rabada being more impact full than the Broad Anderson pair with better strikes rates and wickets per matches both at home and away, but the English pair certainly outscores them for their sheer longevity to perform consistently at the very top of the toughest format of the game. For the record, the Anderson-Broad pair is only second behind the Australian great bowling pair of Glen McGrath and Shane Warne (1001 in 104 Tests) in terms of wickets taken in matches they have played together. The Anderson-Broad pair have also contributed with the most wickets ((480 wickets in 52 Tests) in wins for their team than any other fast bowling pair in the history of the game. With over 1000 Test wickets between them and their recent exploits in the series against Windies, the English duo still look strong enough to cartwheel a few more stumps before they finally calling it a final swansong. ENGLAND'S HIGHEST WICKET TAKERS IN TEST CRICKET 200 Or More Test Wickets James Anderson - 590 Stuart Broad - 501 Ian Botham - 383 Bob Willis - 325 Fred Trueman - 307 Derek Underwood - 297 Graeme Swann - 255 Brain Statham - 252 Matthew Hoggard - 248 Alec Bedser - 236 Andrew Caddick - 234 Darren Gough - 229 Stephen Harmison - 222 Andrew Flintoff - 219 John Snow - 202