Two elbow surgeries and a frustrating year later, the England fast bowler is finding his stride, and pace, again in time for the T20 World Cup
Matt Roller19-Oct-2022Mark Wood is lying in a hospital bed, still under anaesthesia after undergoing elbow surgery. “Is my shoulder meant to be sore?” he asks in a video filmed by England physio Ben Langley. “That’s weird, that. I’ve had elbow surgery but my shoulder’s aching. Whatever. I’ll still bowl fast. F***ing hit ’em in the head.”Seven months later he is in Australia doing just that. Wood has only bowled 12 overs in T20 internationals since his return to fitness but in that time has re-established himself as one of England’s key players, taking three wickets in three consecutive games and hitting a top speed of 156kph in Karachi last month.Related
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It has been a frustrating 2022 for him. He felt discomfort in his elbow during the Ashes last winter and it flared up on the tour of the West Indies, prompting surgery to remove bone and scar tissue. His first attempt at a comeback was unsuccessful and he went under the knife again at the end of July so that a ligament, which had been getting trapped in the joint, could be cut off.”I changed my run-up three years ago and since then, things have been going really well,” Wood says. “I’ve played a lot of games, found some form and done okay, I think, for England. So this was a setback. I had the first surgery but I could sense that it just wasn’t getting there. This time, it’s been sorted straightaway.”He is returning to Australia with his stock at an all-time high. Wood was England’s standout bowler and leading wicket-taker in the Ashes last winter and was one of the few players to enhance his reputation during a gruelling 4-0 series defeat. “It’s great to be going off the back of feeling like I bowled well there last time,” he says. “You want to give a good account of yourself in Australia. It’s the fiercest atmosphere you can be in as an Englishman.”Since returning to fitness, Wood has picked up nine wickets in three T20Is, at a strike rate of 8.0•Albert Perez/ICC/Getty ImagesHis performances earned him praise from several greats of the game working in the media. “I would be texting one of my best pals back home, like, ‘Brett Lee just came up to me’ or ‘Ricky Ponting just spoke to me.’ We used to write their names down in a book as kids and pretend to be them in the back garden. It’s amazing, really, to think that, one, they know your name, and two, they respect you as a cricketer.”This time, Wood will have his family in Australia and has plans to visit Palm Beach Currumbin CC on the Gold Coast, where he spent three seasons playing club cricket. “I’m hoping they can meet my son, Harry,” he says. “At the minute, all he’s into is tarantulas. He must have mentioned going to Australia to see the snakes and the tarantulas about 150 times. The zoo could be on the cards, on a down day.”Wood has quickly become one of the first names on England’s T20 team sheet, despite a spasmodic short-form career to date. He has only played 44 T20s, more than half of them for England. His World Cup team-mates have toured the world playing for different franchises but he has only played one game in an overseas league, for Chennai Super Kings in the IPL in 2018.But Wood possesses something no other England bowler has, with the exception of the injured Jofra Archer: genuine pace. Matthew Mott, England’s coach, calls him an “X-factor bowler”, and Jos Buttler has made it clear to him that he has been picked to take wickets. He has taken one every 14.3 balls across his T20I career, the best strike rate of any England bowler in the format.Since returning to fitness, he has hardly bowled a slower ball, instead trying to “whack the wicket as hard as I could”. Buttler has used him in every phase of the game and will continue to give him short bursts throughout the innings during the World Cup – most notably as a middle-overs enforcer.