I don't like long farewells but here's why our greatest-ever bowler James Anderson needed to be rewarded with two and a bit days like this at Lord's, writes NASSER HUSSAIN
It was a great honour to be allowed to go into the Lord's dressing room on Friday to talk to one of England's greats Jimmy Anderson about bowing out.
The dressing room is the team's inner sanctum and very rarely is such access granted.
When I was England captain, I always felt that it was our secure place, and to open the door as they did was an acknowledgment by the ECB and management team of Ben Stokes, Brendon McCullum and Rob Key of the importance of both the moment and of Anderson as a cricketer.
It also told you something of the man himself that he agreed to allow others to be there in his moment.
What would he rather have done? Sat there slumped over his kit? Or have another microphone shoved in his face? I think we all know the answer.
Jimmy Anderson brought down the curtain on his international career on Friday afternoon
His final game for England, the first Test against West Indies, ended with a comfortable victory
Anderson managed to hold things together as he spoke about what was an emotional week
But he spoke passionately and held things together at the end of what has been a pretty emotional week.
What struck me Friday was not only the respect and love from the England fans in a full ground, but the depth of it in that dressing room.
I was lucky enough to be there at the start of the journey, and I was lucky enough to be there at the end.
Anderson said before the game that he would try and treat it like every other game and give it his absolute utmost, but he also said he'd try to hold back the tears and that was the biggest challenge for him.
People that know him will tell you he doesn't really like all the attention, he is a fairly shy guy and waiting in that Long Room on the first morning would have felt really awkward for him. He has always been more comfortable competing out on the pitch.
The times that he nearly welled up were pretty much whenever his family were involved - his daughters Lola and Ruby ringing the bell on the first morning, or when pictures of them appealing as he beat the outside edge were shown on the big screen.
Also, when he went out to bat on the second day, and through the guard of honour on Friday morning.
What struck me as his team-mates gathered around him and hung on his every word was the friendship he has developed.
Mail Sport's Nasser Hussain (left) was allowed into the England dressing room to speak to him
He was there at the start of a career that has spanned over 20 years and now comes to a close
Anderson was clapped off the field by his other family, who have been the England team
He talked about his family being there, but his other family are that England team.
He is a cricketer that has done everything for the collective, never himself and so 400, 500, 600, 700 Test wickets were never targets. Those landmarks have come as a result of the work he's done. He never went looking for them.
I was lucky enough, like he said, to have changed on the opposite side of that dressing room to him when he started in Test cricket 21 years ago - probably because he was trying to be away from all my rants as his captain.
I'd seen the genius he possessed months before that in Australia and at the 2003 World Cup.
Now, I was sat there all those years later, having witnessed the boy from Burnley turn into an England great.
Not everyone will realise the amount of ups and downs he has gone through, all the work he's done and the doubts he had to overcome.
Like in 2006 when he had to wear a corset, sat in bed for six weeks. Back then, he had to ask himself: Do I need to be doing this? Am I really that good? He didn't think he was.
His family were the ones that turned it around for him by telling him: yes you are. And we are thankful for that because otherwise it would have deprived us of an incredible talent.
The boy from Burnley turned into an England great and will go down as their best ever bowler
Despite dropping a catch to end the game, he went out with another superb bowling display
The moment in this match that summed up that talent was the ball he bowled to dismiss Joshua Da Silva.
It was a statement that he wanted to go out at the top and, as his old mate Stuart Broad did 12 months ago, bowling brilliantly.
That ball showed me that Anderson still has that genius that he was touched with when he first burst onto the international scene.
It was an absolute pearler. Whether to Michael Clarke or Brendon McCullum, there have been Anderson deliveries over more than two decades that, as a batter, you accept are unplayable.
Ones that make the crowd go 'wow,' and professional cricketers go, 'My God', and this was one.
Bowling from his least favourite Nursery End, Anderson hadn't quite got his line right for the first few deliveries of the morning.
He was bowling from the nursery side of the ground because Gus Atkinson had bowled so well from the pavilion end, and correcting his line, angled the ball in so much that Da Silva attempted to turn to the leg-side.
The late movement - with Anderson it was always the lateness of this rather than the movement itself that was key - did the damage.
So, a ball looking like it was going into middle stump swung, nipped away and found the outside edge.
Everyone at Lord's showed their appreciation for Anderson in the final few days of his career
It was so good to see even in his last morning of Test match cricket, that genius was still burning.
I don't like long farewells, people touring the country and that kind of thing, but our greatest ever bowler needed to be rewarded with two and a bit days like this at Lord's.
So that people could show their appreciation. And within a dressing room, filled with pin drop silence, for team-mates huddled around him pints in hand, to show it too.
I asked him if the black stuff was the key to his longevity and whether he would've preferred to have finished at Old Trafford, because I think deep down, he would.
Whether we will see him again for Lancashire. He told me he'd just come off the field. 'Give me a chance,' he said, tucking into his Guinness and offering a cheers to his team.
To a man others raised their glasses and it felt like the whole of England were doing the same in that moment.
The caught and bowled chance he missed would have given him the fairy tale ending that Broad got against Australia last July, but I don't think he was bothered about that.
Gus Atkinson has shown that there is talent out there to replace Anderson in their side
Had he chosen to retire after last summer's Ashes, where it didn't quite go for him and he took only five wickets, it would have been an unfitting ending for someone who had been so good for so long.
Instead, he went away, got more zip into his run up and into his gather, and even at the age of 41 reminded everyone in this country one final time that he'd still got it.
You can quibble about whether it was two or three Test matches too early, whether he should have faced Sri Lanka on his home ground next month, but it's the right thing for him to move on.
As we saw with Gus Atkinson this week there is talent out there that England have got to get into their XI over the next few months.
But while I can agree with the decision, it doesn't mean I don't feel a great sadness that we are leaving behind one of our finest.
Anderson will stay with England for the rest of the summer as a bowling mentor before potentially going into coaching
And that's the way it should be, really. Great cricketers should leave centre stage with people asking why as opposed to why not? With people convinced you've got more to give.
It was a joy to be there as his captain at the start of his career, it was a joy to be there as a broadcaster through 20 years of his career and a joy to be there at the end in that dressing room with that shy boy I played alongside transformed into an England cricket icon.
Before taking a maiden five-wicket haul against Zimbabwe in 2003, there was an expectation he had something about him. On Friday you saw his team-mates looking on with a huge admiration. that will mean more to him than anything else. The love for him was palpable.
He will still be there as a bowling mentor for the rest of the summer, but we'll miss him with Duke's ball in hand. That's for sure.
