In the … sorry, let’s try again, a little quicker. In the ti … and once more. In the time … OK, let’s press on. They say the average adult reads at 300 words a minute. Which means that in the time it took you to read the first word of this article the ball had just left Mark Wood’s hand, and while you read the second it had travelled the length of the pitch, and by the time you finished the third it had landed, changed direction and beaten the batsman. Who, when they’re facing bowling of Wood’s pace, has approximately 0.4 seconds to judge the line, the length, decide on a shot and play it.
Or to put it another way, just enough time to blink their eyes twice, something they’ll likely do a third, fourth and fifth time when they turn around to figure out exactly what just happened to the ball that was just coming towards them. If they’re lucky they’ll find their stumps are still there where they’re supposed to be when they do it.
Wood arrived late for this series, and played like he was in a hurry to catch up with it. His first ball was 91mph, his second 93mph, and the fastest anyone had bowled all series, a record he immediately broke with his third, which was 95mph. It was the fastest over ever clocked at Headingley, although, as Fred Trueman might very well have said if he’d only been here to see it, they only started measuring these things in 2006, and since he was on his deathbed at the time he was just a yard or two short of where he’d usually have been that season.
The game had a very different feeling to it once Wood was bowling. At that speed, cricket is a game played right out on the limits. Marnus Labuschagne is, at this particular minute, third in the ICC’s rankings, and here he was batting like a man trying to fend off a firing squad with his bat. At one point he was beaten by a bouncer that whistled past his chin and was still rising when it flew over Jonny Bairstow. It went for four byes, which were the sum total of what Australia made in Wood’s first three overs.
Usman Khawaja, who was facing Ollie Robinson at the other end, didn’t seem especially keen to press for any quick singles, although he doubtless offered Labuschagne the odd reassuring word about what an excellent job he was doing.
Khawaja generally plays with the air of a man who has so much time that he’d rather wait 10 minutes for the next bus than take two quick steps to catch this one. When he did make the mistake of fetching up at Wood’s end, he had no choice but to hurry up. Wood pushed him back deep into his crease with a series of short balls, and then hit him with a 95mph inswinger. Khawaja decided to try to drive it, and was still staring off in the direction he hoped the shot would go when the ball whistled past his inside edge and ripped his middle stump out of the ground.
The ball hit them so hard the umpires had to replace it before the next delivery because the seam had broken open.
Everyone gets a little tougher when they know they’ve got the scariest kid in the schoolyard with them, and with Wood in the ranks England’s attack had a menace and threat that had been lacking in the first two Tests, when their talk had often seemed a lot more hostile than their bowling. Stuart Broad, still furious about Lord’s, was full of spite, Chris Woakes, playing his first Test in almost a year and a half, bowled with such zip and nip that you wondered where he had been for the last three weeks. Ollie Robinson delivered his best spell of the series yet before he limped off injured, with what was described as a “back spasm”.
The problem was that their fielding wasn’t half so sharp. This England seem to be too busy to have much time for anything as quotidian as catching practice; their practice sessions make extensive use of bucket hats, a bluetooth-enabled boombox and Brendon McCullum’s carefully curated playlists, but not a fielding coach. It may yet end up being the difference between the two teams. They missed five catches here, including one off Travis Head, on 9, and another off Mitch Marsh on 12. Those two alone meant they ended up conceding at least 136 more runs than they should have done.
Wood was undeterred. He has boundless enthusiasm for the game. He hares around the outfield like a kid who’s eaten too many Skittles, and bowls every ball like it might be the last he ever delivers, which, given the state his body is in, it might very well be. In his final spell of the day, he bowled Mitchell Starc, trapped Pat Cummins lbw, hit Alex Carey on the head then had him caught in the deep off the very next delivery, and dismissed Todd Murphy, bowled off the inside edge. All in the space of 14 balls. A fast game is a good game, as every old pro knows, and England’s has never been quicker.
