A need for speed

“Remember, lad,” Len Hutton once told Ray Lindwall, “one day, we’ll have a fast bowler – and I hope that day isn’t too far off.” That was in 1950-51. Lindwall wasn’t so white-knuckle quick for Australia that year as he had been on England’s previous tour, in 1946-47, but he was still fast enough to make Hutton duck, and faster by far than any of England’s bowlers that year – the captain, Freddie Brown, Alec Bedser, Trevor Bailey, and John Warr. And well as Bedser bowled, once he was done England’s attack, stacked against Australia’s of Lindwall, Keith Miller, and Bill Johnston felt, in the memorable phrase Graham Gooch used 40 years later, something a little like “a fart competing against thunder”. Australia won the Ashes 4-1, Miller, Lindwall, and Johnston took 54 wickets at 19 between them.

Hutton got lucky. His prophecy came good four years later. He was captain now, and unlike Brown he did have a quick: Frank Tyson, who many reckoned the fastest of them all. In the second Test at Sydney, Lindwall hit Tyson with a short ball on the back of the head. “I shouldn’t have done that,” Lindwall said soon after, though whether that was in regret at what he had done or worry about what was to come is not clear. Tyson returned from hospital “very, very angry” and took 6 for 85 in the second innings, then followed it with nine for 95 in the third Test and six for 132 in the fourth. Don Bradman thought it was the fastest bowling he had ever seen. England won the series 3-1.

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Three weeks out from the start of this series, it’s a good time to be sharing old Ashes stories. The moral of this particular one is that if an English captain doesn’t necessarily need a fast bowler to win in Australia, he will sure sleep a little easier if he has one around. Douglas Jardine had Harold Larwood, Ray Illingworth had John Snow, and Mike Brearley had Bob Willis. Joe Root, however, is travelling without one. The quickest England have, Mark Wood, will be in Australia with the England Lions, though, suffering with a bruised heel, he was well off the pace in his last Test back in July. Meanwhile, since Steven Finn has been sent home, Root has his pick of five. James Anderson and Stuart Broad, of course, then Chris Woakes, Jake Ball, and Craig Overton.

Which, since Australia have Mitchell Starc, Pat Cummins and Josh Hazlewood to pick from, leaves Root looking a little like a man who has brought a set of steak knives to a gunfight. The absence of Ben Stokes, who bowled so many short, sharp, hostile spells in the last English summer, is never going to be so keenly felt as it will when Root is looking for a bowler to reply in kind to whatever Starc and Cummins serve up. It has been four years since Mitchell Johnson, Ryan Harris, and Peter Siddle dismembered Alastair Cook’s England team, recent enough, despite England’s 3-2 win in the series in between, for the Australian players and press to make a point of talking of probing the wounds to see how well they’ve healed.

“Everyone will like to bowl like Jono and terrorise the Poms like he did,” says Starc, “we’ve got a few guys who can bowl pretty quick.” Starc’s early-season form, eight wickets and two hat-tricks in back-to-back matches for New South Wales, isn’t just ominous, but apocalyptic. England’s own form is still unfurling. Their draw against the WA XI last weekend turned into a glorified net session but was, at least, a better way to start the tour than being thrashed in a one-day match by a scratch team of has-beens and will-bes, which is what seemed to happen so often in the past.

The most reassuring thing about this match was that Anderson took four for 27. This is Anderson’s fourth Ashes tour, and that’s the best start he’s ever made to a tour in Australia. You guess that if England are going to win, it will be in the large part because the superb form Anderson had during the summer has run seamlessly on through his autumn and winter too. It wasn’t so very long ago that he was fielding questions about whether or not he was going to quit, but they dried up during the summer of 2017, when he took more wickets, at a lower average, economy rate, and strike rate than in any other season of his career.

With Stokes out, Broad and Woakes both searching for their best form, Ball and Overton still wet behind the ears, Anderson, all of a sudden, seems more important to England than ever. At 35, he has the polished expertise of a man who is completely comfortable with his craft, as if, after 15 years of practice, the intricacies of settling on a length, of swinging the ball, setting the batsman up, have all become second nature to him, the mechanics so familiar that they can be done at will and without thinking about them. He will hope that holds true in Australia too, where he will have to work with a Kookaburra ball, and he has a mercurial record.

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In 2006-07, still a novice, Anderson was wretched, took two wickets in two Tests, was dropped then picked again for the fifth. In 2010-11 he was superb, and took 24 wickets at 26, with cheap four-wicket hauls at Adelaide, Melbourne and Sydney. And in 2013-14, he was underwhelming, and finished with 14 wickets at 44. Tyson never much rated guile as a quality in a fast bowler. “Outwardly, thought and cunning methods add to the armoury of the quick bowler and make him the complete, shrewd, mechanically perfect athlete,” he wrote. “Inwardly, guile saps the physical foundations of the edifice of fast bowling until it takes away the real desire and very reasons for wanting to bowl quick.” That may be, but, in 2017-18, you guess, Anderson’s guile is England’s best hope. Or else, like Hutton, Root may find the best he has to offer is the threat of something faster in four years’ time.