Search Goes On For Next Rocket Man!

Tim Wigmore explores the long-standing problem of finding a bowler of genuine pace on home shores

- Tim Wigmore

 Wanted: a cricketer,must be able to bowl at speeds exceeding 90mph over several days without grave risk of injury.

In the Ashes series, there are no shortage of cricketers who fulfil this description. But, here’s the snag: they are all Australian. And so, while Australia have Mitchell Starc, Josh Hazlewood and Pat Cummins, who can all clear 90mph with ease – not to mention James Pattinson and Nathan Coulter-Nile, who are capable of doing so when fit – England have the look of a team bringing knives to a gunfight.

What has gone wrong? Why, when Australia have a battery of bowlers of express pace, can England seemingly not even field one? Even the pace of Mark Wood is more mirage, gaining a few mph with every Test that he misses, than reality. Recall his speeds during Test matches last summer, when Wood would often be the slowest England quick of the lot.

And so the sense is that, rather than an ill-timed injury or not, England’s paucity of quicks is altogether more systematic: the result of deep-seated flaws in the system.