It was a delivery that threatened to slice Mikyle Louis in two that drew the biggest gasp during the most exhilarating, breathtaking, sustained display of fast bowling ever witnessed in this country.
When Louis bent out of the way in unison with the leather sphere searing past his nose, a 17,500 full house transfixed by this modern day gladiatorial combat wondered: is Mark Wood getting quicker?
It is a question with multiple answers. Yes, he was. Incrementally so in this, his third over of the second Test. Having hit 95 and 96 with his previous two deliveries, Wood had cranked things up to 97.1 miles per hour – his top speed of the match.
And yes, he is. Across England’s 241-run win over West Indies on the banks of the Trent, Wood’s average pace was 91.2mph, dramatically higher than his career mean of 87.4 and shattering the previous record for a Test match on British soil of 90.59 by Australian Brett Lee in the final instalment of the iconic 2005 Ashes.
So, how is a bowler who hits the mid-point of his 30s next January flying like never before?
Mark Wood (pictured) is continuing to impress, taking two wickets during England’s second Test victory over the West Indies
Startlingly, Wood clocked an eye-watering speed of 97.1mph during his third over of the match
It was a delivery that threatened to slice Mikyle Louis (right) in two that drew the biggest gasp
Wood himself tells Mail Sport that age has a lot to do with it, saying: ‘I think I’m more robust naturally with being older and I know when to listen to my body now, when to back off and when to train.’
Put simply, the 34-year-old bowls less than in the past and in contrast to stepping onto the stage of Test cricket’s theatre, rarely operates at full tilt when venturing to the nets. You won’t hear his England team-mates complaining.
‘When I train at cricket, I never really bowl flat out, it’s all grooving and getting enough done,’ Wood says.
‘Again, as I’ve got older, it’s about getting the balance right between feeling ready and not just bowling for the sake of it.’
Instead, his preparation focuses on gym work to provide him with the physicality required for one of the most gruelling demands in sport.
Standing at 5ft 10ins and weighing 78.5 kilograms, Wood does not possess the stereotypical stature of a fast bowler, but pound for pound measures up against any of his contemporaries.
‘He’s so diligent with his weight training and he does some pretty big lifts. Realistically, that’s just writing an insurance cheque. If you encase your bones in the best, strongest muscle you possibly can you’ve got a chance of surviving,’ says Kevin Shine, former head of the ECB’s pace programme.
But how does the pace bowler prepare his body so that he can perform at the top level?
Former England coach Kevin Shine said that Wood is ‘diligent with his weight training and does some pretty big lifts’
‘If you look at an iceberg, you’ve got strength which sits under the water, and the top bit is power.
‘Bowling is a power exercise, but you have that strength to underpin you if you want to access all of it, as Woody needs to in bowling very, very fast.’
Wood’s regime includes regular Bulgarian split squats and Romanian dead lifts as well as push press exercises – target big muscles in the power zone of the body.
Unsurprisingly, there is a lot of glute and core work but neither does he neglect mobility exercises for knees and ankles given a chequered history with injury.
On the eve of a Test, he eases off in terms of intensity and switches to 3 x 3 workouts – three sets of exercises focusing in turn on hips and thighs, back and biceps and chest and shoulders, such as leg presses, arm dips and chin ups. Large compound movements in low volume to keep explosiveness for bowling.
In recent years, he has tinkered with his aerobic work too. Fast bowling demands endurance and to replicate the requirements of the art, Wood does lots of tempo running (sequences of 100 metres in 20 seconds followed by a 40 second return to the start) and 40m sprints.
A change in his approach to the crease has also paid dividends. When he began with Durham, Wood’s run-up was much shorter, but Stuart Broad and Jimmy Anderson sat him down on a bowling camp in Potchefstroom, South Africa, in December 2014 and suggested he lengthen it.
He also possesses excellent fast twitch muscle fibres plus the ability to align his hips and arms perfectly
Committing, however, comes with jeopardy as Wood himself knows well enough, after suffering several injuries during his career
A combination of genetics and mechanics – he possesses excellent fast twitch muscle fibres plus the ability to align his hips and arms perfectly – mean Wood is able to propel the ball 22 yards in the equivalent of 0.4 seconds and his original run-up was designed for him to explode into the point of release like a gymnast hitting the vault.
However, the two men who would go on to become England’s most prolific Test bowlers reckoned he was trying to get from first gear to fifth too quickly, meaning he lacked tempo and rhythm as a result.
Others agreed and over time a longer approach, replicating an aeroplane taking off on a runway, was adopted.
As Broad reflects, the other bowlers who like Wood have got close to and even touched 100mph since recordings began – Pakistan’s Shoaib Akhtar and the Australian pair of Lee and Shaun Tait – all had ‘long, flowing run-ups that allowed momentum to build up as they hit the crease.’
Ottis Gibson, the former England bowling coach, expands upon the point, observing that while a hefty proportion of bowlers check themselves or marginally slow down as they brace themselves for the business moment of releasing the ball, Wood is still accelerating.
‘It’s a rare gift and that’s why he’s different to other people,’ Gibson says. He also attributes this to Wood falling over so often in delivery. Extreme pace can only be achieved, Gibson believes, if the individual is 100 per cent intent on creating it. There can be no holding back.
Committing, however, comes with jeopardy as Wood himself knows well enough. After the third operation on his left ankle in the space of 12 months in 2016, the Ashington-born player considered quitting.
The Ashington-born player had previously considered quitting following a third operation on his left ankle in the space of 12 months
Shine (pictured), a man with first-hand experience of fast bowling injuries would help Wood continue to bowl using biomechanics
Shine said that he and Wood (pictured) used force plates to understand how he was moving, and altered where his ankle was put down on the floor
Biomechanics saved him. Shine, a man with first-hand experience of the hazardous relationship between fast bowling injury and the mental struggles it provides, tapped into the knowledge of the medical team working alongside him at the ECB’s Loughborough centre and made the slightest but most crucial of amendments.
‘Using force plates, we were able to look at what was actually happening to his front foot, and without changing his action, we were just able to change very subtly where his ankle was put down on the floor to move the forces,’ he says.
For Wood, increased confidence in his body has developed as time has passed. Since making Brendon McCullum his first victim of 110 to date on debut at Lord’s in 2015, he has played 35 of 118 matches. However, 19 of them have been between 2021-24 and England are undoubtedly benefitting from using their prime strike weapon better.
Chris Woakes said earlier this week that he needs a few days on the gallops to get into the groove of bowling. Make a thoroughbred racehorse run every day, though, and it won’t be winning by the end of the week. Wood is an animal best when fresh. The 93.9mph loosener to Louis last week was his first delivery in first-class cricket for more than four months, stretching back to the Test series in India.
The security of a three-year central contract, worth a basic £800,000 annually, helps. Wood, the bubbliest of characters on the surface, is a natural worrier underneath. No longer concerned about what others might think about the regularity of his appearances, or schlepping around Twenty20 tournaments trying to make up his yearly money (Wood has not always featured on the ECB’s contracted list) he is flourishing.
With Wood – from the no-nonsense Northumberland town of Ashington that also blessed English sport with the Charlton brothers, Jackie Milburn and fellow fast bowler Steve Harmison – less is more.
For Wood, an increased confidence in his body has developed as time has passed and that has also helped him improve his speed
Wood certainly worked up a sweat at Trent Bridge and match figures of 28-6-88-2 did little justice to the quality of what he was producing
He keeps things simple. Like his food. One of the reasons England have taken their own chefs on Asian tours is that he is no fan of spice. They ensure he is getting plenty of variety and volume – he says he is a voracious eater on both training and match days – to complement supplements handed out by the nutritionists. Being teetotal perhaps explains why he got cramp for the first time in his career on Nottingham’s hottest day of the year last Friday. Seldom is he dehydrated.
Wood certainly worked up a sweat at Trent Bridge, though, and match figures of 28-6-88-2 did little justice to the quality of what he was producing from that braced front leg and catapult-like release from the right arm.
It was hard to recall any bowler passing the outside edge as frequently without reward. In over over to Jason Holder, an edge that dropped short of first slip was followed by four genuine play and misses.
‘What he did was total box office,’ says Shine. ‘Woody can swing the ball beautifully because he’s always worked on his skills, and he has a gorgeous seam position.’
None have done so with such velocity.
