Mark Wood’s waiting game pays off in light speed to rejuvenate England

Mark Wood has done a lot of watching in the past six months, waiting for his elbow to heal. By Thursday evening and the second T20 between England and Pakistan he reached breaking point. That night Babar Azam and Mohammad Rizwan marmelised England’s six-man attack. Wood sat on the sidelines thinking about how he would bowl to them.

“I was watching Babar’s movements, watching Rizwan’s movements, to see if I could spot their tells, and I was trying to analyse all the time what we could do better, could we have bowled around the wicket? Could we have bowled bouncers? Were the slower balls holding up?”

Twenty-four hours later Wood had his chance to find out. On Friday he played his first game since the first Test against West Indies in Antigua in March. His presence meant that for Azam, Rizwan and the rest of the Pakistan batters England’s attack was all of a sudden a very different proposition.

Wood’s first delivery, to Rizwan, went for a leg bye; his second, to Azam, was driven past mid-off for four. At this point Wood’s captain, Moeen Ali, came over from mid-on to talk to him. “I need you to be more aggressive against Babar here,” Ali told him. “That was it,” Wood says. “I let it fly.”

Azam saw the next ball coming for his head and swayed out of the way. Wood, running through the possible next moves, decided to try another on a wider line. “I didn’t think he would duck two in a row. The first one was a surprise. For the next one I didn’t want it to be at him because he might try to help it to leg with the pace. So I tried to get it a little bit wider, thinking he might try to fetch it.”

The ball was clocked at 95mph, the fastest ball in the series. And Wood was right, Azam did play it, up over the slips, and down to third