It was entirely fitting that James Anderson took the match-winning wicket at Trent Bridge. Never has England's reliance on him been so painfully exposed. Over recent months, England have leant on him like an elderly person might a zimmer frame, or like an alcoholic in search of a drink.

Perhaps that is the better simile, for England's over-reliance upon Anderson is not healthy. The burden upon him, not just in Test cricket, but in ODIs as well, has become immense. While his colleagues lose form, fitness and confidence, Anderson has been consistently excellent for several years, leading his captain to coax just one more over, one more spell from him time after time. England go to the well so often that fears are growing it may run dry.

It looked for a while on the last day as if England had reached that moment. After an immense opening spell of 13 overs that took his tally for game above 50 in unusual heat, Anderson was forced off the pitch with what the England camp insist - an insistence perhaps tinged with hope - was an attack of cramp.

At that stage he might have presumed his work was done. Australia were 80 runs from their target when the ninth wicket fell; his colleagues should have been able to take it from there.

Instead, Anderson was obliged to take on plenty of fluids at the lunch break and found himself forced into service once more after it became painfully obvious that England had no replacement capable of sustaining his match-clinching burst. It took him only two overs to finish the game off and clinch not just his second five-wicket haul of the match but the second ten-wicket haul of his career. His statistics, dented by premature exposure to international cricket, may never show it but his bowling over the last three years has touched a level of greatness to which very few England bowlers have ventured.

Anderson was magnificent in this game. It is not just his skill, but his fitness and reliability that render him such a valuable player. MS Dhoni rated him the difference between the sides after England's Test series victory in India and it was no exaggeration. It is the same in this series: if Anderson were injured, this England attack would hold little fear for Australia.

This surface offered him little. There was just a little conventional swing and seam and minimal pace or bounce. Conditions were much more akin to Ahmedabad or Kolkata than to stereotypical English pitches. But Anderson, with his nagging control and ability to reverse-swing the ball into and away from the batsmen from a well-disguised action, rose above such obstacles to remain a potent force. It was a performance of which Zaheer Khan or Mohammad Asif would have been proud.

He deserved better support, though. While Stuart Broad may be worryingly fragile, he had an increasingly impressive Test, but a couple of other England players would have slipped away from Trent Bridge amid the celebrations, feeling low as result of their personal contributions.

Certainly Steven Finn, cutting a diffident figure for a man capable of such brutish spells, endured a horrible final day. Not only did he miss a tough chance at deep-backward square leg to reprieve Brad Haddin on 62, but he failed to sustain the pressure created by Anderson when he relieved him in the attack. The contrast was unflattering: while Anderson delivered three wicket maidens in the session and conceded only 29 runs in a 13-over spell, Finn was plundered for 15 in his first over and five in his second. He was then removed from the attack and is far from certain to play at Lord's.