Whatever happens next, Anderson and Broad deserved a better ending than this

It’s the beginning of the end, then, for the two finest fast bowlers England have ever had, the decision to drop them as sudden and unexpected as a bullet in the back. Like they say in the Sopranos: “Our line of work, it’s always out there, you probably don’t even hear it when it happens.”

Jimmy Anderson knows it. He wrote as much in his column just a couple of weeks ago: “Everyone’s future is in doubt, it always happens when you get beaten in Ashes.” But it’s one thing to say it, another to really believe it’s true and might be about to happen to you. He also said Joe Root had only just told him he wanted him to stay on. And he would have too, through the West Indies tour, into the English summer and beyond.

If you were picking a side to win England’s next game, Anderson and Broad would be in it. There’s no argument in the statistics. Anderson has taken 56 wickets at 24 runs each in the past two years of Test cricket, Broad 52 at 21. No one else has managed more than 40.

You might highlight Anderson’s growing problem with taking wickets in the second innings, but he is still a fitter bowler than Ollie Robinson, who in Australia struggled to make it through his third and fourth spells, let alone the third and fourth days.

You might mention Broad’s long lean stretch on tour in Sri Lanka and India last spring, but he’s still a better Test bowler in the conditions than Chris Woakes. But of course those aren’t the numbers that matter. Anderson will hate it, given he’s been complaining for years that older players are held to a different standards, but the figures behind this decision are their ages – 35 and 39 – and the sense that England’s new interim management team, who have now sacked or dropped 11 players and coaches in