Nearly two years after his last Test on home soil, and having missed the first two games of this Ashes series, Mark Wood sought Ben Stokes to ask if the England captain had any requests or instructions before his belated introduction to the contest at Headingley last week. “He just asked: ‘Are you ready? Are you ready to bowl some thunderbolts?’ I said yes, and that was it,” Wood said.
His thunderbolts brought him seven wickets and several records; his bowling in the first-innings peaked at 96.5mph and hit an average speed not seen in this country since Brett Lee visited for the 2005 Ashes. Now his focus is on unleashing some more when the action moves to Old Trafford next week. Wood says he is “absolutely” determined to make sure “lightning strikes twice”, a process which starts immediately with him spending the next few days not doing much.
Before Headingley Wood had not played any competitive cricket since leaving the Indian Premier League in mid-April. In the first three days in Leeds he bowled 28.4 overs, eight deliveries fewer than he delivered in the first six months of the year. Given his injury record, and his lack of recent match practice, the free week before the fourth Test is well timed. He not only needs to guard against fatigue, he has physical wounds to heal: Wood so regularly falls to the turf as he strains to deliver the ball at maximum speed he all but shredded the skin on his elbows.
“I’ll speak to the physio, but I imagine I will bowl once or twice, a couple of gym sessions, maybe some running, but it won’t be too drastic,” he said. “I have to let the body recover. It’s my first game in a very, very long time, especially in Test cricket. I’ll get myself in a good space, let the wounds recover and get myself up for the next one.”
Almost as remarkable as the pace of Wood’s bowling was the speed at which he scored with the bat, sprinting to 40 off 16 balls in England’s two innings. Since people started counting how many balls each batter faces nobody has come close to scoring so many runs so quickly in a Test. Wood ended with a strike rate of 250; of those who batted in both innings of a Test his closest rival is Stokes, who scored 41 at 195.2 against Pakistan last December, and of those who batted only once it is Jacques Kallis, with 54 at 216 against Zimbabwe in 2005.
“It fills me with great pride to say I can do well against Australia,” Wood said. “Look at facing Pat Cummins and Mitchell Starc. One, it’s not easy. Two, it’s really intimidating. They’re bowling fast, they get good bounce. More often than not they come out on top. Luckily this time it’s the one out of a hundred I managed to get through.”
