For the first six years of James Anderson's international career, the best way to sum up his bowling was to paraphrase Mother Goose: when he's good, he's very, very good - and when he's bad he's horrid. Well, fairly horrid, anyway, because when the force was with him, he was capable of irresistible spells, seemingly able to swing the ball round corners at an impressive speed.

But in 2010 Anderson came of age in a staggeringly comprehensive fashion. No longer content with being unplayable when the mood caught him, he took the decision to shelve the "magic balls" and concentrated on hammering out a rock-solid line and length, with dot balls and maidens his new holy grail. The upshot was a scintillating year in which he proved unhittable in every sense, with an economy rate that ramped up