England's fountain of youth seam bowling serum

Could England have found a fountain of youth for seam bowlers? Look at Mark Wood, who is 33 and is bowling consistently quicker than 90MPH. This was him in the last World Cup, just before he turned 33, just raw sexy pace.

In the Ashes, he has beaten 95MPH at the age of 33. People this age are not supposed to be bowling this quick. I mean, you could argue that almost no one has ever bowled at this pace anyway. But it is remarkable to do it into your mid-30s when most fast bowlers are now limping around complaining about some LBW they didn't get in in their fourth Test.

Then to string so many fast deliveries together is really something else. Because most fast bowlers in the game's history don't have the ability to do this for an entire over. But at 33, are you kidding? You shouldn't be able to walk without a limp, let alone run in and beat 95MPH.

And it made me wonder if we had ever seen a 33-year-old bowl this fast before. I started with Brett Lee, who was certainly bowling fast around that age but was pretty much low 90s at best by then. That's very fast, but not where Wood is at.

Lee was very fast, and it lasted throughout his career. Unlike many other quicks of his era, he was very fit and consistent with his pace. But he was a slightly different kind of bowler because he swung it. So while he kept his pace up, like Allan Donald before him, he could slightly slow down and still be awesome.

Of course, Lee's slower balls could have used some work. You can find the ghost of one in the Archbishop Tennison school outside the Oval.

Dirk Nannes was a late bloomer who was certainly at his best around Wood's pace, but at the age of 33 years, he had slowed down quite a bit. All those years on the snowboard got to him.

Shaun Tait's body didn't allow for much age 33 fast bowling. Mitchell Johnson was still bowling fast when he turned 32; in fact, that was probably near his prime. But by the age of 33, he had slowed down. Jeff Thomson was never as quick after his shoulder injury.

But of course, we need to look at Shoaib Ahktar. He is a weird case, there is no doubt he slowed down a lot later on, and he barely played as much. At 35, he was clocked at almost 100MPH, but I think this was probably a rogue number.

These are a couple of the balls from the game that we can see where Shoaib delivers at just over 90MPH, and then later he goes through Mahela with one that is far slower. But this is 35-year-old Shoaib.

When he was just about to turn 33, we had him bowling in the IPL; he clocked in at around 92.5MPH a couple of times. Two years later, we have him at 34 bowling at low 90s again versus England. So we know that he had pace towards the end.

But it was also around this time I saw Shoaib Ahktar play for Surrey. And he was utterly crocked as a human. At one stage, he couldn't wait for the physio to come out, so he asked the curator to help him.

That is not Mark Wood. Yes, he gets injured a lot and likely won't beat Shoaib's 47 Tests. But right now, he looks at peak speed and is as fit as we've seen him.

This isn't just about Mark Wood, though. Look at this Test; this is an ancient seam Test and series. We have had Ollie Robinson and Josh Tongue around at times. But now you have just the old fellas playing. And England is so old they've made Australia look young.

This Test has six of the top sixty seamers by balls in Tests. Woakes and Wood are top 150 as well. This is by so far the most experienced Test attack in the game's history.

And age is always talked about now because of Jimmy Anderson. It has become impossible to discuss him without mentioning his age. And no one is wrong to do so.

What he is doing has never been done before. Dale Steyn has the 28th most seam wickets over the age of 35. He has 20, and Anderson has 211. This is getting very silly. But Anderson is over 40.

Anderson already has more than a quarter of the entire history of wickets classified as seam over the age of 40. Let's look at some of the others here. George Chubb was a batter who made a late career change and was South Africa's oldest debutant. Lala Amarnath bowled a little bit of part-time seam. Nigel Haig and Tip Snooke are the same. The only real seamers on this list are Gubby Allen and Les Jackson. They took a combined nine wickets. Seamers do not bowl into their 40s. You're more likely to see Graham Gooch bowling seam - 1 wicket - than a real bowler doing this job.

Anderson is the king of the mid-life seamers.

Do you want to know how old James Anderson is? The young guy who was supposed to take over from him when he retired is now 34.

Now you could argue that Anderson has not been great in this series. Or not even any good. He's reached his Troy McClure stage. But he was pretty good not long after he turned 40. Perhaps the fact he's turning 41 on Sunday might be playing a bigger part. I mean, there is a reason that no bowler has done this before.

But Anderson has not had much luck in this series. The first pitch was set up for his batters.

Now it's a bit rich for a man who had quite a few wickets in his favour to suddenly complain one wicket wasn't for him. But he has probably got to the age where he shouts at clouds. Well, he would if he hadn't blocked the phrase Clouderson on Twitter.

Then he goes to Lord's, and it's a pitch for bouncers. Again, not his thing, certainly not in the last five years. The first wicket of the series that would have suited him was Headingley, and he wasn't playing.

There is one sign that this series has been harder just because of how Australia has played him. Of all the Ashes bowlers, he has had the lowest percentage of attacking shots from his bowling. He's helped by not bowling to his own batters, of course, but even then, he's really low compared to the other English bowlers.

However, if Australia thought he was finished, surely they would attack him more.

The other side is that Anderson has not caused many errors. Again, if you're being attacked less than others, this makes some sense. But Anderson is with the spinners cluster, and really outside of Robinson, no other frontline seamer has created anywhere near as low a number of errors. However, there is little doubt that Anderson should have taken more than his five wickets looking at his overall numbers.

So it was ironic that there was some luck in his dismissal of Mitch Marsh, where his inside edge could have ended up flying past the stumps safely.

And today, it was Stuart Broad who changed the game. He's a sprightly 37, though when his knees are pumping, he can move so fast that he goes back in time to become only 33. He and Jimmy Anderson combine for almost 15% of all wickets by seamers over 35. That is just a crazy stat.

They are the best old bowling team in history, and the second is probably Ambrose and Walsh, which was only two men. None of this is normal. The question shouldn't be when Jimmy Anderson will be dropped; it should be; how on earth did they make these old bastards bowl so damn long.