Since Tymal Mills was diagnosed with a congenital back injury in 2015 he has never played more than 38 games in a calendar year. At 31, and despite the fact that since that diagnosis he has been unable to play any game longer than 20 overs a side, he has played fewer career Twenty20 matches than Sam Curran, six years his junior.
But going into England’s T20 series against West Indies he has played 36 times in 2023 and is on the verge of a double breakthrough: forcing his way back into an international side he has only played for once in the 22 months between their last trip to the Caribbean and this one, and establishing a new high-water mark in his battle against his own body.
“I had a really good summer,” he said. “Just playing games, stacking them up, training properly and not worrying too much about my body, that made a big difference and kept me in a really good rhythm. I was able to train properly, practice and work on things and then take them into games.
“It’s building that rhythm, building that momentum. That can go against you if you’re not bowling particularly well, but I guess I was coupling bowling well with bowling often and just staying on top of things, getting in a good rhythm and a good routine. Just having confidence in my body that every time I go out there to play, I’m not holding back in any little way where I’m worried about getting an injury. There’s just little things that over a period of time help translate to good performances.”
While still being able to bowl at speeds exceeding 90mph, Mills is no longer the express pace merchant who was labelled “the fastest bowler in England” after he was flown to Australia a decade ago to help the Test side prepare to face Mitchell Johnson in the Ashes.
“I probably don’t bowl quite as quickly as I did when I was 20 or 21 but I think I can still bowl quick enough,” he said.
“Ultimately what’s most important is that I’m a much better bowler. I’m much more accurate, tactically I’m very astute and that’s something I take a lot of pride in. I’d rather be maybe a touch slower but playing a lot of games than being a tearaway and breaking down a lot.”
The aim now is next summer’s T20 World Cup, which is to be co‑hosted by West Indies and the USA. Over the last two iterations of the tournament Mills has played a long-term game of injury tennis with Reece Topley: in the United Arab Emirates in 2021 Mills was forced out of the tournament with a thigh strain and replaced in the squad by Topley, who didn’t end up playing. In Australia in 2022 Topley was forced out of the tournament with an ankle injury and replaced in the squad by Mills, who didn’t end up playing.
Mills’s aim now is to secure a place in the group that will defend their title in six months’ time, hopefully doing a better job of it than the group that attempted to retain the 50-over World Cup this year. “There won’t be a shortage of players playing T20 cricket in the lead-up to the World Cup, and in 50-over cricket that maybe wasn’t the case,” Mills said.
“We have these games now and the boys will be playing franchise cricket for the next six months, so by the time the T20 World Cup rolls round everybody’s going to be coming into it off the back of a lot of cricket,” says the Sussex bowler.
“I don’t know who’s going to be in the squad but whatever combination they pick, everybody is going to know each other pretty well. Hopefully everybody will be in a great place to come back out here and use this little bit of knowledge we’re going to gain from this trip to stand us in good stead to defend it.”
