• Woakes and Bashir round out attack to face West Indies
• Smith to keep wicket in first Test of English summer

England’s first Test of the summer, against West Indies at Lord’s on Wednesday, will see the end of one great Test bowler’s career and potentially the start of another, as Gus Atkinson makes his debut alongside the retiring Jimmy Anderson.

Shoaib Bashir, the 20-year-old Somerset spinner, will make his first home appearance after playing three games in India over the winter, with Chris Woakes rounding out the bowling attack. As expected Jamie Smith, Atkinson’s Surrey teammate, will keep wicket, also making his debut.

This week at Lord’s is about celebrating the greatest seam bowler of all time. There will never be another like him

There were times during my Test career, sitting in the dressing room reflecting on things quietly, when I almost could not believe how lucky I was to be in the same England team as Jimmy Anderson. He really is a once-in-a-generation cricketer and, in my mind, the greatest seam bowler of all time.

The crazy thing is, I made my Test debut in 2014 when Jimmy was 31. So he was already 11 years an international, just short of 100 caps. He had won the Ashes home and away, formed an all-time great partnership with Stuart Broad and been central to a historic series win in India two years earlier. In that match, against Sri Lanka at Lord’s, he took seven wickets to bring up 350 Test wickets and apparently that was only a job half done. What a ridiculous player. A joke, really.

The old warhorse took seven for 35 on his return to Lancashire to reward fans who turned out in the rain to see their hero

A sharpened pencil of a man in a No 9 shirt took the new ball from Southport’s Harrod Drive End immediately after Lancashire’s captain, Keaton Jennings, declared on Tuesday morning. After two days of waiting – and Monday’s play completely washed out – the spectators wrung themselves dry and sat up tall in their fold-up chairs around the boundary.

They didn’t have to wait long. Jimmy Anderson’s 19th ball of the English summer – in his first spell since the Dharamsala Test, his first spell for Lancashire since May 2023 and his first spell since he was ushered stage left by the England management in May – angled into Haseeb Hameed’s bat and bounced back on to the stumps. And that was only the beginning – in an opening spell of 10-2-19-6, he dismantled Nottinghamshire, a hush descending on the crowd each time he paused at the top of his run-up, before they exploded when he pocketed a wicket, and another, and another.

Dillon Pennington and Gus Atkinson face tough battle to prove they can replace country’s greatest Test bowlers

Brendon McCullum posted a tweet at 8.39pm on 5 July 2017. “Jimmy Anderson 122 Tests, 467 wickets. Stuart Broad 102 Tests, 368 wickets. Whenever the time comes, good luck replacing that!”

About that, Brendon. It is your job now. One more thing, seven years later those stats are even more ­nosebleed-inducing: Stuart Broad: 167 Tests and 604 wickets. Jimmy Anderson: 187 Tests and 700 wickets (and counting) A combined tally of 1,304 Test wickets and 37 years of experience. Good luck indeed when the Test summer starts at Lord’s on Wednesday.

With a new government will come grown-up conversations about our colonial history’s part in the acquiring of artefacts

It’s liberating to sense how a government whose primary concern is not fighting culture wars might return a grown-up freedom to public debate. A discussion at the British Museum last week, “Who owns the past?”, could not, in this sense, have been more timely. The debate, which marked the arrival at the museum of Nicholas Cullinan, its new director, featured contributions from Mary Beard, David Olusoga, Rory Stewart and Munira Mirza about the issues faced by museums as they incorporate discussion of colonial history into their collections, and examine questions of ownership.

Having witnessed the paceman’s England bow, there is plenty still to admire in the warhorse as he gears up to say goodbye

He’ll finish where he started: at Lord’s with Rob Key looking on admiringly and a Labour prime minister residing in Downing Street. Some 21 years ago, when Tony Blair was in charge and Key was batting at No 5 for England, a shy, young whippersnapper from Burnley, James Anderson, made his Test debut against Zimbabwe.

It’s a long time ago and quite a lot has changed since then: on that weekend at the end of May 2003, Paul McCartney was performing in front of 100,000 fans in Moscow’s Red Square, preparations were in hand for the first ever Twenty20 matches on the county circuit and Phil Tufnell was about to win I’m a Celebrity … Get Me Out of Here! What remains is the prospect of Anderson bowling for England in a Lord’s Test match – one last time.

• Seven for 35 are best Championship figures of 2024
• Lyon surprised at England’s stance after ‘amazing’ session

Jimmy Anderson gave England a glimpse of what they will be missing when he is put out to pasture after the Lord’s Test next week, taking seven wickets for 35 for Lancashire against Nottinghamshire – the best bowling figures in the County Championship this year – in his first game for four months.

Anderson, 41, had not played since the innings defeat by India in ­Dharamsala in March that brought his 700th Test wicket. In May he confirmed the first Test against West Indies would be his 188th and last. But in Southport on Tuesday he fell straight back into the groove of excellence delivered with ­devilish control. It all left his long-time ­Australian adversary turned ­Lancashire teammate Nathan Lyon aiming a dig in the direction of the England selectors.