And so it was an oddly cagey Anderson who faced the media in Leicester on Monday, at the behest of the Test sponsors LV= Insurance, but before he'd had any cast-iron assurances that his name will be back in the frame for another Lord's appearance, when the squad for the first Test against New Zealand is announced on Wednesday.

"Until that squad's picked I'm not counting on anything," he said. "My job's to try and prove that I'm in good form, take wickets for Lancashire and help them win games. That's all I'm bothered about, and then we'll see what happens whenever the team is announced."

Chicken-counting aside, however, Anderson's return for his 170th Test appearance, and 96th on home soil, is a given. Not only has he proven his form and fitness on the county circuit - including with the eye-catching dismissal of his former England captain, Joe Root, in last week's Roses clash - he and his long-term sidekick Stuart Broad are just about the only capped England seamers available to Ben Stokes and Brendon McCullum as they prepare to begin their captain-coach alliance in a fortnight's time.

Saqib Mahmood and Matt Fisher, both of whom debuted in Anderson's and Broad's absence in the Caribbean, have succumbed to stress fractures, the same complaint that Sam Curran is currently returning from, while Craig Overton and Chris Woakes - who shared the new ball in Antigua in March - are labouring with knee injuries. Jofra Archer and Mark Wood are coming back from elbow operations, and Ollie Robinson - the man who ought to be in possession - has been a fitness concern since struggling through the Hobart Test in January.

Anderson and Broad, on the other hand, just keep rumbling on. "I don't know, it's just luck I guess," he said of their longevity. "We still love playing, we're really hungry to take wickets, and still love that feeling you get from it. I've spoken to Stuart a lot over the last few months, we still feel like we've got a lot to give the game, whether it's for Notts or Lancashire, or for England."

Nevertheless, Anderson admitted that, with his 40th birthday approaching in July, his omission for the West Indies tour had caused him to reassess his priorities as he enters his 20th season as an international cricketer.

"I definitely questioned it, yeah," he said. "I talked it through with my family as well, and they saw it as I did, that I feel like I've got more to give to the game. The longer time went on, the more I was with the Lancs lads doing pre-season training. I was still doing the gym work, and I wasn't bored of it. I wanted to be there doing it, irrelevant of what was going to happen in the summer.

"If I play the whole season for Lancashire, then great. If I get a Test call-up then brilliant, but at the minute I'm really enjoying playing cricket. It did come into question, I guess - do I want to do I want to carry on? But in my head, I quickly decided I did want to see what happened this year."

And if there were any residual doubts, then they were emphatically quashed by the 11th and most recent of his first-class wickets this season - the uprooting of Root's off and middle stumps at Headingley on Sunday, as Anderson's typically frugal figures of 15-7-17-2 briefly set Lancashire up for a final-day victory push against Yorkshire.

"I did enjoy that one, it was nice to get a player of Joe's quality out," Anderson said. And it was doubtless all the sweeter given that Root had still been England captain for the Caribbean tour, and therefore was at least complicit in Anderson's controversial omission.

Did he say anything to Root when he got him out? "Absolutely not, no. Didn't need to. Just pick the two stumps off the ground," Anderson said. "We do talk. We've not fallen out or anything. Yeah, we chatted. I spoke to him before he announced that he was stepping down. There's still a huge amount of respect between the two of us so there's no animosity.

"The biggest thing for me [on Sunday] was that we were pushing for a win," Anderson added. "Obviously he got 140 in the first innings; we know how good a player he is. A few of our guys were seeing him up close for the first time and realising how good a player he is; they all commented on it. It was fruitless in the end, but we were pushing hard for that win, and he was the best player so it was nice to get the best player."

Three months after the event, Anderson says he hasn't had a full explanation for his omission from the Test squad, and still doesn't know whether there was a perceived issue with his attitude in Australia, where his eight wickets at 23.37 couldn't prevent a 4-0 series loss. However, with his focus now back on adding to his England-record tally of 640 wickets, his thoughts are firmly fixed on the coming summer, as he hopes to help the new team hierarchy pick the performances up after a torrid 12 months.

"It's gone now. It's history. I'm not bothered about what's gone in the past," he said. "All I can control is what I do in the future. I've got to try to prove that I'm still good enough to play international cricket and keep my fingers crossed that the selectors and the captain think so as well.

"I don't think from a performance point of view my confidence would have taken a knock. I felt like I bowled well in Australia and since I've been bowling back in England I've felt like I'm in good shape and bowling well. So from that point of view I feel like I know what I'm doing and I don't think that will change, really.

"I guess you do start questioning other things when that sort of thing happens - is it something I've done around the group or whatever else? I guess that's the one thing that you start thinking about. But when it comes to cricket I'm pretty confident that I'm doing okay."

Anderson will be reassured too by the vote of confidence he received from Stokes after his accession to the Test captaincy, and is ready to return the compliment after seeing glimpses of his leadership style during the Ashes campaign.

"He's a natural leader and the lads all look up to him in the dressing-room," Anderson said. "When he's had the opportunity to be captain… I think there was maybe an hour in Australia, and you could see he's got a real good tactical brain on him. He's the hardest trainer in the group and sets the example of how to be an international cricketer.

"We're at quite a low point at the minute as a Test side. Where we are in the Test championship, we're going to have to do something serious to be able to turn it around and get back up towards where we want to be, towards the top. I don't think that necessarily happens overnight. But with Brendon and Ben, we're never going to take a backward step. It could be a really exciting time for English cricket."

Sunrisers Hyderabad 193 for 6 (Tripathi 76, Garg 42, Pooran 38, Ramandeep 3-20) beat Mumbai Indians 190 for 7 (Rohit 48, David 46, Kishan 43, Malik 3-23) by 3 runs

A refreshing change at the top
Asked to bat first, Sunrisers came out with a new opening pair. Even though they lost Abhishek Sharma early, Tripathi and Garg counterattacked towards the end of the powerplay. It looked like a dry pitch, but the duo hit hard enough for even slight mis-hits to clear the small Wankhede boundaries. That said, they nailed their hitting almost all the time.

It started with Tripathi taking on Jasprit Bumrah in the fifth over, hitting him for six, four and four, before Garg put a short ball from Daniel Sams on to the top tier of the stands at deep square-leg. Often teams maximise the powerplay and slow down as the field spreads, but these two kept going. Garg took the lead against the spinners, hitting a six off left-armer Sanjay Yadav before taking two fours in one Mayank Markande over. When Garg fell for 42 off 26 in the tenth over, he had made sure Sunrisers had their highest ten-over score this IPL: 97.

The wicket didn't slow down Tripathi at all, and Pooran walked in as if coming from a net and used to the pace of the pitch. The second ball he faced, Pooran glanced Bumrah for four. He then lofted Riley Meredith for a six over long-off and then swept him for another over square leg. Tripathi wasn't to be left behind, taking three fours off the 16th over, bowled by Sams.

Umran Malik. Pace like fire
When Malik began the ninth over, familiar questions over his control started cropping up. However, even after three extra deliveries and 14 runs in his first over, Malik had clearly unsettled the batters. Rohit was hit flush in the helmet, which went for four leg-byes. Kishan was hit on the bat even before he could get into position to pull, the top-edge going for a six.

However, it was Washington Sundar, who brought the first breakthrough. It was a match-up that has worked for Washington in the past. Before this match, he had bowled 19 balls to Rohit for 17 runs and two wickets. So Sunrisers were not shy of bowling him at Rohit. Eventually, he saw Rohit give him the charge, shortened the length, and had him caught at deep midwicket.

The door ajar, Malik burst through. He made life difficult for Kishan, Tilak Verma and pinch-hitter Sams. Each of them was late on the ball, unable to come to terms with the pace and the bounce. Malik was now only three wickets behind the table-topper, but more tellingly, had conceded most not-in-control runs this IPL, drawing, on an average, a staggering ten false responses in each four-over spell. Malik's burst left Mumbai needing 67 off the last five.

David causes a flutter
In the closing stages of the match, Sunrisers preferred T Natarajan, who is having a nightmare tournament, to the inexperienced Malik. Natarajan frequently missed his yorker, bowling low full tosses that David hit for two fours and four sixes, including a 114-metre monster. Now they needed just 19 off 13. Off the last ball of the 18th over, David wanted a single off a deflection from Natarajan but didn't see that the ball had hardly gone anywhere. He left himself no chance of making it, and the non-striker Sanjay Yadav was too stunned to hold his ground to keep the near end safe and sacrifice himself once David had made it to that end.

The Bhuvneshwar show
Bhuvneshwar has been overshadowed of late by pacier, younger bowlers, but he has hardly missed a step himself. This 19th was a perfect example. He nailed the yorker again and again, mixing it up with a slower short ball that got Sanjay out. The wicket-maiden left Ramandeep too much to do in the final over, which Fazalhaq Farooqi closed out effectively.

On ESPNcricinfo's show T20 Time:Out, Shastri and Vettori heaped praise on Tripathi's shot-making, temperament, all-round game, fearlessness and his ability to take on Jasprit Bumrah.

When asked if Tripathi was far from an India call-up, Shastri said: "He's not far at all. If someone doesn't get up from the bench or gets up from the wrong side of the bed and gets injured, this guy can be slotted in straightaway. He can go at No. 3 or 4, he's a dangerous player, and should be in the mix. If he's performing season after season, I'm sure the selectors will be watching that very, very closely and giving him his due."

"No question about that," Shastri said. "It's not that one swallow that makes a summer, he's been around for a bit and what I like about his game is his fearlessness, and he's got a tag of being a known quantity and someone the opposition wants to get out quickly. Irrespective of that, he comes out and plays his game and his shot-making ability, the all-round game that he has, he's not overawed by any opposition or by any bowler, which is great to see."

Tripathi has batted only at No. 3 during this IPL for Sunrisers and has made the position his own. His knock on Tuesday, his highest score this season, was all the more crucial in a must-win game because Sunrisers pushed an out-of-form Kane Williamson down the order and opened with Priyam Garg and Abhishek Sharma. The pressure mounted on Sunrisers when Abhishek, their top scorer in this IPL until Tuesday, fell for 9 in the third over.

After Abhishek, Sunrisers have mainly been driven by their middle-order trio of Tripathi, Aiden Markram and Nicholas Pooran. The advantage Tripathi holds over his team-mates is that he doesn't take time to get off the blocks. While Markram and Pooran had struck at 98.9 and 90.8 respectively over their first 10 balls, before this game, Tripathi had scored his runs at 147.4. When Markram and Pooran had picked up their strike rates to 135.1 and 184.6 in the 11-20 balls segment, Tripathi had lifted his even further, to 203.6

He got going quickly against Mumbai too, by picking the gaps early on. In the fourth over, against left-arm spinner Sanjay Yadav, who had fine leg in the circle, Tripathi shuffled across to sweep for a boundary past that fielder. Two balls later, Sanjay pitched it wider outside off and Tripathi drove him elegantly over the covers for four.

"Tripathi is a very, very confident player," Shastri said. "What I liked best was his shot selection, the positions he got in, the anticipation, the reading of the bowler and the lengths he is going to bowl, and then getting into positions to attack a part of the field he wanted to. He gave himself in those positions a couple of options. If the ball was up, he had a couple of shots ready once he got into that position; if the bowler altered, he had plan B in place as well. So extremely impressive and a terrific innings."

Next, Tripathi faced Bumrah, against whom he already had a favourable match-up of 28 runs off 17 balls for one dismissal. Once he saw out two balls from Bumrah, Tripathi dispatched a well-anticipated short ball for six over midwicket. Bumrah then resorted to a slower length ball with a stifling line outside off and Tripathi got a boundary off that too; he opened the face of the bat late and just enough to find the gap behind square on the off side. Off the last ball of the over, Tripathi drilled a full delivery through the covers to pick up his third successive boundary. In all, 15 came off that over.

"Tripathi's innings was exceptional," Vettori said. "He has had a great season, but this feels like his best innings. His shot-making against highly skilled bowlers…it's a beautiful swing that he has, and we saw the best of him tonight.

"You judge batsmen against the best bowlers in the world. You see him against Bumrah and he looked comfortable. Bumrah threw everything at him, he bowled short, he bowled a slower ball, bowled it in…the shot off the slower ball was his best one. Bumrah went to his yorker and he punished him through the covers.

, "At no time does he look under pressure. He has this natural calmness at the wicket, prepared to strike from ball one and some of his shot-making is outstanding. There's no shot he doesn't have and he's fearless the way he goes about it. He never looks under pressure, he never looks stressed, so all that culminates into a very good T20 batsman.

"He never lets a bowler settle. Even good balls he has the ability to dismiss, particularly against spinners he'll be aggressive against them, he'll take them on, so always pushing the game forward rather than waiting for the game to happen and the situation is irrelevant, and that's what makes him and Suryakumar special, that they play their natural style irrespective of the situation."

"The thing with Tripathi season after season is whether he has a great or good season, or not a great season by his standards, while he's at the crease the scoreboard is ticking and he's scoring at a great rate, which is tremendous at No. 3 because he sets it up beautifully," Shastri said. "If a wicket goes early, he's ready to counterattack. When you get a good start, he's there to build on that. He doesn't go behind the eight ball, rotates the strike well, he has the big shots up his sleeve and he has a tremendous all-round game.

"This guy comes with no baggage. He'll come out and play his shots. The time he spends at the crease, he'll be value addition to the [India] side."

Speaking with Star Sports after being named the Player of the Match, Tripathi said he too was hopeful of getting the India call up.

"Definitely, when you play cricket it's obviously your dream to represent your country and if I keep doing well and they [selectors] believe I can win the matches for my country then definitely I'll get the opportunity."