The anchor is not the problem, the batting order behind him is

Blaming a slow innings misses that the same innings is fine or fatal depending entirely on who bats at seven.

Every white ball collapse produces the same argument by the next morning. Somebody batted too slowly, took the game too deep, and cost his side the match. Almost always the wrong man gets named.

An anchor innings is a bet on the back half of the order. If numbers six, seven and eight can strike at high pace against a hard newish ball and a set field, then thirty from thirty-five in the middle is a perfectly good foundation, because the runs will be recovered later with interest. If numbers six, seven and eight are a wicketkeeper who cannot clear the ring and two bowlers, the same innings is a disaster. Identical batting. Opposite verdict. The variable is not the anchor at all.

This is why I distrust the whole conversation about intent. Intent is discussed as a personal quality, a matter of courage or modern thinking, when it is almost entirely a structural permission. A batter takes risks in proportion to how expensive his wicket is, and his wicket is expensive precisely when the players behind him are weak. Telling that man to play with more freedom is telling him to ignore true information about his own team.

So the fix is selection, and selection is where sides flinch. Picking a genuine hitter at seven costs you a bowling option or a specialist keeper, and if he fails twice the selection gets torn apart, whereas an anchor who scores a slow fifty in a defeat looks respectable and survives. The incentives protect the safe structure and punish the one that would actually let the top order play the way everybody claims to want.

There is a second cost nobody prices. A deep batting order changes the fielding captain's behaviour from about over thirty, because he cannot squeeze a side that has hitters left. He has to keep men out. That is worth runs to the top order too, in gaps that would otherwise be plugged.

I would rather lose two games badly with a long batting order than lose six narrowly with a short one. The narrow losses feel better and they are the same result on the table, which is a thing sides forget somewhere around the middle of a long season.