My life is measured out by the careers of my cricketing heroes

I don’t imagine anyone will weep when I retire. There will be no nostalgic reminiscences about my moments of magic, no teary eyes as I take my leave for the final time.

With a bit of luck I’ll be handed a carriage clock, slapped on the back and trudge away into the sunset, where the OAP gardening club will be waiting to sign me up.

How different retirement is for sporting heroes. For those who bow out at the top, it’s standing ovations, garlands and pure emotion, as adoring crowds give thanks for what has been and wonder how on earth things will ever be the same again.

Not every sportsman and woman is lucky. Most don’t sign off with a World Cup win, an Olympic gold or a test match century. Indeed, it’s more often the case that retirement follows a few injury-hit seasons in the lower leagues, or a slow loss of form. Still, it doesn’t mean necessarily that the end of their playing career is felt any less keenly by their fans.

On Thursday at Lord’s, speculation was rife before play that England would take the field with neither Stuart Broad nor James Anderson in their starting XI. These two great bowlers, with more than 1,100 test wickets between them, have been the mainstays of England’s test attack for most of my adult life. Anderson, remarkably, made his debut in 2003.

It had been confirmed on Wednesday that Broad’s injury meant he was out for the rest of the summer. Anderson was said to be a major doubt for this test match at least. But after the toss on Thursday morning, when the captains ran through their teams, it became clear that Anderson had been passed fit to play. The news was met with a cheer from the crowd that was commensurate with his status as a cricketing god.

Despite being 39, which is ancient for a fast bowler, Jimmy remains England’s key to unlocking the defences of opposition batsman. But in the past couple of years, there have been several occasions when age looked as if it were catching up with him; injuries have led him to miss matches with relative regularity.

And while we cheered the news of his participation on Thursday, he surely can’t go on forever. In the modern era, no quick bowler has taken test wickets beyond their 40th year: Anderson, who seems only to get better, probably will; but how much longer?

When his retirement does come, I will be among the hordes who will feel it like a punch to the gut. From the moment he burst on the scene, Anderson has been my favourite player, a hero to replace the hole left in my life by the retirement in 2001 of Michael Atherton.

My love for Atherton was obvious: I’d watched him play for Cambridge University when I was a boy; he bowled leg-spin (in the early days anyway) like I did. Lancashire became my favourite county because that’s who he played for.

Anderson is a Lancastrian too, and he shared with Atherton a quiet, though obvious, stubbornness, which I admired. Yet in terms of their roles in the team, my two heroes were poles apart. Perhaps I’d accepted by the early 2000s that I wasn’t going to be a professional cricketer, so there was no sense that I needed an idol I wanted to be. But maybe sub-consciously I just fell for Anderson because his name was similar to Atherton. Either way, I’m not sure what I will do when the England team sheet no longer features the man they call the ‘Burnley Express’.

No doubt there will be a period of grieving, as one imagines there is for players themselves when a great career ends. Eventually, I’ll search around for a new favourite, and I’ll take vicarious pleasure in their achievements. And I might reflect with some horror that by the time my next cricketing hero’s career comes to end, my own retirement may not be very far away.

In the meantime, Jimmy, please don’t take your final bow for a while yet.