England’s batting during the Bazball era has often been described as cricket in fast-forward. Their bowling in this series, however, has been anything but.
Not helped by wickets that fulfilled only one half of Ben Stokes’s “fast and flat” brief at Edgbaston and Lord’s, England’s attack looked a shade polite whenever movement was not forthcoming, and Australia’s extra yard of pace was one of several factors to mark the world champions out as simply a better cricket team across two fine-margin Tests.
On the first day here at Headingley, though, the arms race swung England’s way, Australia suddenly looking like an army whose advantage of sturdier bows and sharper arrows had been somewhat negated by the invention of the cannon.
In a blistering opening spell, the first 24 balls of Mark Wood’s series immediately went in as the 24 fastest of England’s, the quickest sent down at an outrageous 96.5mph and, just as ridiculously, the slowest clocked at a pedestrian 91mph. The last claimed the wicket of Usman Khawaja, the batter England have struggled most to dislodge, with a 95mph seed.
Mitchell Starc’s left-arm angle and swing is a nightmarish weapon and Pat Cummins is the world’s most complete red-ball bowler, but this, in terms of theatre and the sheer, unifying sense of ‘thank goodness I’m not the bloke on strike’, was fast bowling on another level, Test match cricket in another gear.
During the lunch interval, with Australia four down, the England football manager, Gareth Southgate, sang the quick’s praises on Test Match Special and there is something about high pace in any sport, whether it be a winger or a cricket ball darting through the defences, that delivers a unique thrill, something in the way it allows even the badgers and tacticians among us to take leave from the game’s intricacies and revel in the simpler interpretation of something raw and pure.
It does not take a music critic dissecting the many layers of a new album to tell you that Marvin Gaye had a decent set of lungs.
Wood believes he can still get quicker, but what is not in doubt is that at 33 he is still getting better. Injuries have had their wicked way with the pacer, who even now is in the midst of only his 29th Test (Zak Crawley is playing his 37th) and is yet to reach 100 wickets.
But from being a player whose airspeed either provided a point of difference once Plan A had failed, or else whose stock rose for the lament of its absence, Wood’s sporadic Test appearances over the last 18 months have increasingly come with headline impact.
He was the one player to emerge with credit and admiration from an Ashes tour Down Under where the home public’s main feeling towards England seemed to be one of disgust at the feeble showing put up in opposition. In Pakistan last winter, there was a match-winning spell to secure an historic series win in Multan.
And yesterday felt like another step altogether, maybe the first time on home soil — where he was averaging more than 40 compared to less than 25 away — that Wood had been unequivocally England’s main event from his first ball.
Wood believes he can still get quicker, but what is not in doubt is that at 33 he is still getting better
One can only speculate at what might have been had Wood not been overlooked at Edgbaston and then deemed not fit for Lord’s, but if England are to stand any chance of an epic comeback from 2-0 down, then keeping the quick on the park for as long as the series remains live will surely be essential.
To that end, workload management will be key, the onus falling on Stokes to pick his moments and, more pertinently, on England’s fielders to stop starting taking catches.
Wood had bowled only six overs yesterday by the time Mitchell Marsh was dropped on 12 soon after lunch, Travis Head having already been put down on nine.
That pair’s partnership was eventually worth 155 before Marsh’s sensational knock of 118 was brought to an end on the stroke of tea and, given the efficiency with which Wood ran through the tail thereafter, it is no exaggeration to say that had Joe Root and Jonny Bairstow held simple chances, England’s bowlers might have been feet up with a crossword by mid-afternoon.
Four more wickets for Wood in the evening session left him with figures of five for 34, his best in Tests in England. More than any Lord’s controversy, his belated arrival has galvanised his side.
