James Anderson will be playing for one final day in his international career as England are closing on a big win in the first Test against the West Indies at Lord's. Anderson, who is playing his farewell Test match at Lord's has gotten wickets in both innings and has reached 703 in his longest format career. However, Anderson was on the verge of achieving a batting record, emulating his long-time bowling partner Stuart Broad for hitting a six off his final delivery he faced in Test matches.
However, Anderson came into bat amid euphoria for the West Indies side that he didn't even get a guard of honour. Anderson came in at fall of the wicket of Shoaib Bashir, who was found short of his crease by a spectacular direct hit from debutant Mickyle Louis.
When asked about West Indies' plans or intention to give Anderson a guard of honour, paced Jayden Seales mentioned that it was in their plans but the run out from Louis derailed that thought. "We spoke about it before he came out to bat, that we were going to give him a guard of honour," Seales said in the press conference.
"Obviously the run out took us all the way down to Swiss Cottage as you said [referring to celebrations and euphoria after the run out], so it was pretty hard to do the guard of honour for the great man. Luckily, Jason caught up with him," Seales added as his response left everyone in splits.
Jamie Smith mistimed a Jayden Seales delivery towards covers and Louis from deep cover had to run in to get hold of the ball quickly. Smith saw enough time for Louis to run, pick up the ball and throw to run two, however, Bashir was slow on his return and Louis took aim and fired a bullet throw onto the stumps on full. Louis was naturally excited but his teammates were taken aback by what they just saw and ran towards him without a thought. Till the celebrations were done, Anderson was already in the ground.
Seales was the pick of the bowlers for the West Indies taking four wickets but England taking a 250-run lead in the first innings was always going to be a little too much. England need four wickets to win the first Test with the West Indies still trailing by 171 runs.
