The hard yards of the United Arab Emirates are about to get tougher than ever for England's seamers – but senior partner James Anderson is loving every minute of it.
Anderson could be forgiven, at the age of 33 with 109 Tests under his belt, for feeling the strain on his second trip to the Gulf to take on Pakistan.
But two Tests in, 1-0 down and with just the final match to come – at potentially the most difficult venue of all – he is so enthused by his job that he believes he could go on for another five years.
Anderson is already England's all-time leading wicket-taker, and can reasonably expect to go up to sixth in the global list once this winter's assignments here and in South Africa are done.
He has had to work especially hard for his seven wickets in Abu Dhabi and Dubai, but easily tops England's tour averages with an admirable 19.14 – and an economy rate of two.
It is a wonderful effort, and Anderson is ready for more graft on what is sure to be another unresponsive surface when England begin their bid to earn a series draw in the third Test on Sunday.
"It's renowned for being the flatter of the three," he said. "Our stat man was very kind to put a few things up on the wall about seam movement and swing percentages at the start of the series – and Sharjah was 3% seam movement, which was pretty depressing from a bowler's point of view.
"So if I bowled 100 balls, three of them would seam."
Succeeding in harsh desert climes is giving him an extra kick.
"I'm loving it at the minute, loving bowling, loving playing, enjoying taking wickets and the challenges we've got ahead.
"Why can't I play for another five years? I'm going to keep going till my body can't take any more."
The task appears thankless at times for England's seamers, especially after captain Alastair Cook lost the toss in the first two Tests - consigning the tourists to 151.1 and then 118.5 overs in the field.
"It is pretty brutal," said Anderson, who like all his team-mates is regretting the one batting collapse - on the third morning in Dubai - which is the only difference between the two sides to date.
"We've played nine good days of cricket and one horrendous session when we shot ourselves in the foot. That has put us in this position where we are 1-0 down.
"(But) we still feel quite positive - because we've played some good cricket, and it could be 1-1 or 1-0 to us in different circumstances."
James Anderson was speaking on behalf of Waitrose, official sponsor of the England cricket team. For exclusive player content visit waitrose.com/cricket
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here