England’s Jimmy Anderson: unique style of the boldest swinger in town | Mike Selvey | Sport | The Guardian
Certainly a great achievement, especially considering his selection was very non English if many recall. Picked on raw talent like Asian teams tend to do and thrown to the wolves in Australia 2002/03, instead of taking many wickets in county cricket. Jimmy essentially learnt to be a top quality bowler via harsh on the job training.
So while i'd still rate
Gough, Caddick, Flintoff & a fit Simon Jones as the better ENG fast bowlers of my cricket lifetime & cannot place Anderson in the same sentence as legendary ENG quicks such as Trueman, Larwood, Barnes, Snow, Statham, Botham, Tyson, Willis, Bedser - he deserves massive respect for reaching 100th test and being on verge of being the nations leading wicket-taker in history - given his aforementioned path to this point.