Hyderabad:The great Jimmy Anderson is poetry in motion when he bowls. His fluidity of movement while running towards the crease, the flowingness of hands and feet, and the zippiness with which he bowls is the stuff of folklore. Not many in the world of sport possess the art Anderson has.
Contrarily, Pat Cummins is brute, fast and can blow away oppositions single-handedly on his day. His thrilling cameos and enthralling exhibition of endurance can be a treat to watch for the lovers of the game.
And if numbers are anything to go by, Cummins' 164 wickets in 34 Test matches is already a legend in the making. With 632 wickets in 166 matches, Anderson has achieved almost everything a cricketer can.
Come 8th December, both the cricketers will leave nothing in the tank to make their team win as Australia and England face off in one of cricket's biggest spectacles -- The Ashes.
But Anderson holding Kookaburra cricket ball is a completely different proposition and former cricketer-turned-commentator Laxman Sivaramakrishnan believes Cummins may lag behind when these two giants of the game compete as he will have an additional responsibility of captaining the side.
"It will be a good contest between the two. I think Jimmy Anderson will be more than a handful because Australia in the recent past haven't had top-class openers. If Anderson strikes early, there is a big chance for him to be able to perform better than Cummins. Pat will also have the additional pressure of being the captain and the bowler of the team. I will pick Jimmy Anderson to pick a lot more wickets than Cummins," Sivaramakrishnan told Etv Bharat.
Sivaramakrishnan is also banking on Anderson's experience to come good against the Aussie batters who have struggled in the recent past and lost their long-standing authority at The Gabba after Rishabh Pant and Shubman Gill went all guns blazing and blew their bowling attack.