Lancashire's Jimmy Anderson casts a spell on Northamptonshire

http://www.theguardian.com/sport/2014/apr/30/lancashire-jimmy-anderson-northamptonshire-cricket

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When Jimmy Anderson is on song, and the ball dances obediently to his tune, he is mesmeric to watch. At this stage of the season, after what he describes as a battering in Australia, he is not so much on song as Luciano Pavarotti in full voice. Realistically, when the ball moved around as it did in this match, Northamptonshire did not stand a chance, despite the brave efforts of James Middlebrook in making 87 second-innings runs. Lancashire ran out winners by 60 runs half an hour before lunch.

The national selector James Whitaker arrived a little too late to see anything but the fag-end of the match, so missed most of Anderson's bowling. But his match figures of 10 for 88, reached with the aid of his second five-wicket haul of the game, speak for themselves. It is the fifth time in his career that he has taken 10 or more in a match but two of these have come in his last three matches, following a similar haul against Nottinghamshire at his favourite hunting ground, Trent Bridge.

Anderson was palpably better in the second innings, his run athletic and rhythmic, and his action smooth as Italian buffalo milk ice cream. He was faster, too, second time around, maybe a yard, to hustle the batsmen further; and the snaking movement away from the right hander, something he appeared to have lost in a period of obsession with sending the ball the other way, largely to left handers, is back. He beat the bat as often as not. A picky person might suggest that a smidgeon further up and he will find the edge instead of beating it, but the truth is that his length was perfect: better batsmen will fall to many of these deliveries.

The conundrum now is whether to keep him going in red-ball cricket or to select him for the one-day international against Scotland in Aberdeen on 9 May. The chances are he will be picked, for this is Peter Moores' first squad and he would not want to risk being mugged on a pitch of a kind that can often be a great leveller. Anderson England's second most capped one-day international cricketer after Paul Collingwood, still nurses ambition to be part of next year's World Cup.

Assuming he is selected, Anderson will be relieved to have led Lancashire to their first win of the season, which lifts them from the bottom of a congested table to sixth, with Northants now joined in the two relegation places by Durham, the only other winless county in Division One who do, though, have a game in hand.

Sussex stay top despite tumbling to their first defeat of the season by the emphatic margin of an innings and 11 runs against Somerset at Hove. Lewis Gregory, a previously little-known seamer from Devon, continued his eyebrow-raising start to the season with two of the last three wickets, including the Sussex captain, Ed Joyce, for a defiant 93, to give him nine in this match and 17 in his last two.

Worcestershire surged to the top of Division Two with an innings win against Derbyshire, sealed by their Pakistani spin wizard Saeed Ajmal who took four for 40, including the key wicket of Derbyshire's captain, Wayne Madsen.

Essex also seemed to be heading for victory in Bristol when Tymal Mills fired out Gloucestershire's Australian captain, Michael Klinger, to leave them 18 for two and still needing 153 to avoid an innings defeat. But Alex Gidman and Will Tavare, the nephew of the former England batsman Chris, frustrated Alastair Cook's county with a stubborn unbroken stand of 233.