Jimmy Anderson burst lifts the mood of elated England

Even an Ashes triumph seems possible after victory over West Indies

Jimmy Anderson celebrates one of his four wickets with his England team-mates in Grenada on Saturday night (AFP/Getty)

All of a sudden, there is a way forward for England. Four wins in five Test matches and they feel they are going places – to the Ashes and beyond perhaps.

The defeat of West Indies by nine wickets in the second Test, giving England a series lead which they should not surrender in the final match starting on Friday, has changed things.

Make no mistake, there is a difference between the good game that England were talking and actually winning. One is obligatory, the other a little more difficult, as the tourists were finding.

When they went to the Grenada National Stadium on Saturday morning they must have expected, like everybody else, that the match would end in a draw. Alastair Cook, their captain, said that on a scale of one to 10, he had put England’s chances of winning at seven, which is taking up by at least three notches the talking of a good game.

Another draw would have lowered spirits as much as it would have raised those of West Indies. England would have wondered if they would ever take 20 wickets and how they ought to do it.

It needed an inspirational intervention, which came stunningly from Jimmy Anderson. England had their 20 wickets and, soon after, their win. The mood in the camp is one of elation, but more than that it is of patent self-belief and conviction again.

It would be a surprise if West Indies live with them in Barbados now. From top to bottom, the sentiment is that this is the evidence that England are going places.

Moeen Ali, one of the side’s all-rounders, said yesterday: “It’s going to take a bit of time but I feel the nucleus is there. We have some very, very talented players and a lot of people around the world know that we can be a dangerous side. We need to play and keep developing.

“It’s like me coming straight back into the side after an injury, the confidence it gives me knowing England want me to play is good. People can grow from the kind of confidence that gives.”

A week ago that might have been taken as so much political correctness, now it seems to have some heft. Moeen is an important example of how England have evolved rapidly as a side in the past year.

It was in the West Indies a little more than a year ago that he first appeared for England, when they played matches in Antigua and Barbados as preparation for the World Twenty20 campaign. He has advanced swiftly since then.

“I was kind of shy, not knowing exactly what was going on but now I feel very comfortable around the team,” he said.

Moeen exemplifies the way this team has been built in the past year, perhaps more wisely than has been widely acknowledged. Maybe it was with the Ashes in mind. Of the 11 who won on Saturday, five had played more than 50 Tests (three of them more than a hundred), five in 10 or fewer, with Joe Root in between on 23.

The balance feels right and it must have been calculated a year ago that this is what would happen.

There are still worries, of course. The opening batting pair is by no means stable. While Cook’s position is as secure as it has been for at least a year, after five half-centuries in eight innings, a hundred continues to elude him.

For all Anderson’s heroics in Grenada the bowling is bereft of something magical. It is not quite bland at present, and the selected ones are trying their socks off with variations, but it is not exceptional.

Peter Moores, the coach, would give his right arm for a left-arm bowler, whether pace or spin. There is none. Australia will have two this summer and it will make a real difference. England had better wrap Anderson in cotton wool.