I have always been intrigued by bowlers' run-ups. Ask any individual to perform the simple task of starting from a spot, accelerating in a straight line for, say, 15 paces to reach a peak and then decelerate once more, and, by and large, you get the economy of a long jumper on the runway. But my goodness, put a cricket ball in some hands and watch the arm-pumping, knee-jerking often manic change.

Even from his run-up, a fast bowler can be recognised. It is a signature. Some are as pure as spring water, for who could not watch Michael Holding's grace or Harold Larwood's bounding, the rhythm of Fred Trueman and Ray Lindwall, Curtly Ambrose's surge or Thommo's floppy-haired lollop, and not be uplifted?

Some are just a helter‑skelter full tilt, and I fondly believe Shoaib Akhtar would have been faster than many had he not bothered to let go of the ball and instead run down to the other end. With Mike Procter you had someone who bowled faster the further and more rapidly he ran, so that if he started somewhere on the Nursery ground at Lord's, you were in trouble.

And then there are the madcap ones. Recently I saw some footage of the Oval Test of 1976 in which, if you imagine the batsman standing at 12 on the clock face, Bob Willis ran in against West Indies from around eight o'clock with his goose‑flapping charge, not straightened out (after a fashion) until the following winter.

The run-up is, of course, an integral part of bowling. Its main purpose is to best prepare the bowler to deliver the ball at his best. It should be neither so short that he has not reached optimum velocity or mental preparedness, nor so long that it becomes energy-sapping to no additional purpose. It can be intimidatory too: in the last Test he played at The Oval, in 1984, Holding, off a shorter run in those days, suddenly went back to his old one and sent England into a panic, taking five for 43. Afterwards Jeff Dujon, the keeper, said he had bowled no faster. It was a con, a brilliant piece of theatre.

Essentially, I believe that the shorter the run can be to remain effective, the better, which brings me to Steven Finn, whose approach contains an element at the start consisting of half a dozen strides that offer him little, before he gets into his run proper. Even that is inconsistent in its graded acceleration. I am told that in practice he bowls just as fast from a shortened run as from his longer one, while experience tells me that you could develop a much stronger body action consequently, which would also serve to improve an already solid method. I'm told, too, that it has been suggested, but that he is reluctant.

Perhaps he could be told a story. If anyone takes a walk down East Hill in Wandsworth, towards the old Ram brewery, they will see on the right, a small residential development and a sign saying Cricketers Mews. It was on that site, in 1938, that Alf Gover, the doyen of cricket coaches, took over his famous school, with its four gas-lit nets and, in his cricket whites, England sweater and white silk cravat, helped the techniques of the famous and not so famous for the next half century.

In the winter of 1954-55, though, he was sent to Australia as a columnist to cover the MCC tour, in which Len Hutton was attempting to retain the Ashes. The first Test, at The Gabba, was, like so many subsequently, a disaster based on a cock-eyed decision at the toss and shoddy fielding. The Australian opener Arthur Morris and another left-hander, Neil Harvey, each scored big hundreds and England lost by an innings and 54 runs. But in their ranks England had a 24-year-old bowler of rare muscularity and ferocious pace, someone who sacrificed aesthetics for brute force and ran a country mile to do it. Frank Tyson took one for 160 in that match, from 29 eight-ball overs, but inflicted sufficient bruising to the legs of Morris and Harvey that Hutton thought he had a diamond on his hands, if only it could last the course.

Quite possibly to the day 56 years ago, before MCC played Victoria at the MCG as they are now doing, Gover met Tyson at Hutton's instigation and Alf suggested he shortened his run. In the next three Tests, at Sydney, Melbourne and Adelaide, he contributed match figures of 10 for 130, nine for 95, and six for 132 – 25 wickets at 14 apiece, in other words – to England wins, by which means they retained the Ashes. So the legend of the "Typhoon" was made.

Young Finn has attributes of a different kind to Tyson. He will not be another Frank but he is heading towards one day being England's Glenn McGrath, and didn't McGrath shorten his run from the days when he first came to prominence in the Caribbean?