Browsing: bowler

When a small group of us journalists spoke to Fisher at a Lions training camp shortly before they departed for Australia, he admitted he was surprised to even get the call for the development side’s tour.

A solid and dependable county seamer who did himself no harm in his one Test, Fisher has been part of Lions tours on the past three winters but lost his development contract with the national side at the end of 2024.

England wanted to see him stand on his own two feet.

Fisher responded with 31 wickets in the County Championship this season – a solid if unspectacular return.

Significantly 10 of those came in rounds using the Kookaburra ball, the one used in Australia.

He has taken only two wickets on this trip but is the most experienced of the Lions quicks. Experience is what England seem to need right now, rather than other options like the raw left-armer Josh Hull.

Though another bowler with a high release point, he is more similar in style to Matthew Potts than Brydon Carse or Jofra Archer, and Potts is ahead in the queue if England opt for an option who will probe at a fuller length.

Never rule anything out when England are struggling on Ashes tours, however.

This article is the latest from BBC Sport’s Ask Me Anything team.

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There is still hope for England. After four sessions of the first Test, they were 99 runs ahead with nine second-innings wickets remaining.

The capitulation that happened from that point will leave a sour taste in everyone’s mouths, none more so than the players.

However, given the pink ball seems harder to see and the faster you bowl it, seemingly the more effective you are, it leaves England well placed to make the most of the talent at their disposal.

England’s quickest bowler, Mark Wood, played one pink-ball Test on the last Ashes tour four years ago and took nine wickets in the match, proving a menace throughout.

He isn’t available this week, but England will still have Jofra Archer, Gus Atkinson and Brydon Carse – all capable of bowling over 90mph – in their XI, while captain Ben Stokes can exceed 85mph.

The eye-catching display in Australia’s first innings was the most sustained spell of ‘fast’ bowling I’ve seen from an England attack.

There were former Australia internationals remarking how impressed they were by England’s bowling, and writers sharpening their knives for an evisceration of the home team.

If the England bowlers can find the same hostility, pace and skill in Brisbane, there is no doubt they can cause Australia big problems.

Can England go toe-to-toe with Starc? If he recaptures the rhythm and confidence he showed in Perth, he could be Australia’s match-winner once again.

He must go to bed dreaming of bowling with a pink ball.

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Gloucestershire have signed Australian fast bowler Gabe Bell for the first six matches of the 2026 County Championship campaign.

Born in Tasmania, the 30-year-old has played for his home state since 2017 in the Sheffield Shield, Australia’s domestic first-class red-ball competition.

The tall right-armer is currently ninth on this season’s Shield wicket-taking list with 16 in five matches.

In total, Bell has taken 192 first-class wickets for Tasmania in 51 Shield appearances.

His deal at Gloucestershire means he will be available to make his debut away at Lord’s against Middlesex at the beginning of April before fixtures against Durham, Lancashire, Derbyshire, Kent and Northamptonshire.

“Obviously [I’m] thrilled to get the opportunity to come over and play some county cricket with Gloucestershire,” Bell told the club website., external

“I can’t wait to get over to Bristol to meet everyone, and get started in the new year.”

Bell will join Australian compatriot Cameron Bancroft at Gloucestershire next season after the latter signed a two-year deal to remain at the club until 2027.

Gloucestershire director of cricket Jon Lewis added: “We looked hard at what it takes to win in our own conditions in April and May and Gabe comes highly recommended from our network of contacts across Australia.”

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Spencer was out of the game once more, but was still not done.

Five years later, through his work as a fitness coach, Spencer found himself bowling to a young Ravi Bopara in the nets at Rockingham-Mandurah Cricket Club.

“Ravi said ‘Why are you not still playing?'” says Spencer. “Knowing how good Ravi was – and is – if he thought I could do it, maybe I should play.”

After the drugs ban, Spencer felt his time playing for Western Australia was done, so he asked former Zimbabwe and Sussex batter Murray Goodwin if any counties were looking for a bowler.

Remarkably, at the age of 34, Spencer found himself back in county cricket on trial at Sussex in the summer of 2006.

“I thought I was still pretty passionate about the game, but I realised I probably wasn’t,” says Spencer.

“I was sharp, but not as quick as I was as a young fella. I was fit enough to do it, but my work ethic had gone. I probably went over for the wrong reasons.”

Spencer played two first-class matches for Sussex, against Warwickshire and the touring Sri Lanka team. His last wicket in professional cricket was Kumar Sangakkara.

All in all, he took 36 wickets in 16 first-class matches and 23 scalps in 20 List A games.

Nearly 20 years on, Spencer is settled in Perth. He works in the mines in the northern part of Western Australia.

Moody says there is “no question” Spencer could have played international cricket. Spencer says he would have happily played for England or Australia, but the accent is 100% Aussie.

Spencer has no idea how fast he bowled. He thinks he was told he was clocked at 158kph – just over 98mph – but that was “off a short run”.

“I was in the wrong era,” he says, considering the way modern fast bowlers are managed, or how he could have made a fortune as a T20 gun-for-hire.

“It is one of the great shames that we didn’t see enough of Duncan Spencer,” says Campbell. “When he got it right – oh my goodness.”

Spencer did not collect the wickets, the international caps or the rewards he might have, but he experienced what most can only dream of.

“When I didn’t have rhythm, I was as bad as anyone,” he says.

“When it all clicked, it was a great feeling. It’s effortless. When you get the rhythm it feels like it’s coming out medium pace.

“Bowling fast is awesome.”

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England are allegedly likely to be without Mark Wood for the second Ashes Test match with Australia.

Ben Stokes’s team are reeling from suffering an eight-wicket defeat inside two days in the first Test, the quickest Ashes match in 104 years.

The decision was made to go with a five-man pace attack in Perth and it subsequently led to England recording their fastest collective speeds on the opening day of a Test match.

However, a risk was being taken on selecting Wood, who had knee surgery nine months ago, had suffered a minor hamstring niggle in a warm-up game and had not played a Test for 15 months.

Wood could only produce figures of 0-44 across 11 overs in the first Test match, yet he may have remained in the team had he been fully fit.

© Imago / AAP

Wood expected to miss second Ashes Test

Instead, BBC Sport reports that England have concerns over Wood’s knee and are expected to remove him from the team for the upcoming day-night fixture in Brisbane, which starts on Thursday.

Wood did not take part in practice on Saturday, a clear indication that England and the player are erring on the side of caution.

Despite his lack of wickets in the first Test, Wood has previously taken nine wickets in a day-night Test against Australia in Hobart, a feat that would have likely led to his selection.

Josh Tongue, who took eight wickets on his last Test appearance against India in July, is favourite to replace Wood in the first XI.

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Speaking prior to the news of Wood’s injury, former Australia fast bowler Jason Gillespie said he was “concerned about the robustness” of England’s attack.

“Do they have enough work in the bank to be fit and strong enough to bowl consistently high pace across the course of a whole match and then back it up in subsequent matches?” Gillespie told Stumped on BBC World Service.

“That is the big question mark for me.”

Wood’s absence would be keenly felt by England in the day-night conditions at the Gabba – a ground where they have not won since 1986.

England have a poor record in floodlit Tests, having won only two of their previous seven, including three defeats in Australia.

Australia have won 13 of their 14 day-night matches and, in Mitchell Starc, have the best pink-ball bowler in the world.

The pink ball does not behave differently to its red counterpart, but can be harder to see under lights.

Part of Starc’s success in pink-ball matches is the number of deliveries he bowls over 87mph and Wood, England’s fastest option, took nine wickets when he last played a day-night Test against Australia in Hobart in 2022.

Speaking on the For The Love of Cricket podcast, former England seamer Stuart Broad said: “There’s something about the pink ball, you just can’t pick it up quite as well. You get no clues as well, so the seam is black against the pink background, whereas with a red ball and white seam you might see Mitchell Starc’s in-swinger coming back into the stumps or scrambling around.

“It’s just the lights are reflecting off the pink ball so it’s almost like a big planet coming flying towards you.

“It means you’re just judging it from the movement off the surface or reading off the movement of the ball, but at such pace it’s quite difficult to do.”

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Boland fulfilled his part of the bargain. His journey to cricket’s summit is a throwback – a far cry from academy pathways and state under-age teams.

“His transformation over two years was hard to believe,” Jewell says.

“He is almost like a hired assassin. He is so calm, cool and collected.

“You very rarely see a change in his attitude or demeanour whether it is going good or bad.

“At times you thought as a coach ‘am I getting through to this bloke?’ but you saw it in the changes in his game and performances.”

Success in the Melbourne grade system and years of wicket-taking in the Sheffield Shield opened the door to an initial foray in white-ball cricket.

Seen as a yorker specialist for the death overs, Boland played three T20s and 14 one-day internationals in 2016, around the same time he learned of his Indigenous roots through his maternal grandfather which would take him on a tour of England with an Aboriginal XI in 2018.

It is the start to Boland’s Test career that has been a statistical phenomenon, however.

Sixty-two wickets at an average of 16.53. At home those wickets cost just 12.63 runs.

No Australian to have taken as many as him – not Shane Warne, nor Pat Cummins, Mitchell Starc or Josh Hazlewood – can better that record in the game’s history.

“Warney used to talk about developing a new ball every year,” says his state coach Chris Rogers, the former Australia opener.

“It is almost like Scotty has figured out one more thing every year and just keeps adding to his weaponry and his skill.”

He adds: “Bowling yorkers and delivering them under pressure was a skillset he owned for a while.

“The white-ball game has changed though and it is probably more about your change-ups and sequencing of different deliveries through an over and so forth.

“From that point of view he has then switched over to Test cricket.”

After 14 Tests, Boland stands as the most accurate pace bowler in the database of analysts CricViz.

He may not hoop the ball or deliver it at frightening speeds but, helped by the pace and bounce of Australian pitches and a new Kookaburra ball that seams, he has made a habit of finding enough movement to take a batter’s edge or beat their defence.

“When we do our measuring in terms of lines and lengths he is always at the top of our lists,” Rogers says.

“Every time he gets the ball he is almost exactly the same.”

While a hat-trick against West Indies earlier this year added to the list of achievements, it is six scalps on debut that have gone down in Australian sporting legend.

Haseeb Hameed’s thin snick, Jack Leach bowled shouldering arms, Jonny Bairstow pinned lbw, Joe Root’s edged drive, Mark Wood taken in the follow-through and Ollie Robinson snaffled at third slip.

Six for seven at The G.

“We didn’t know an awful lot about him,” Leach recalls.

“He seemed to be moving the ball just the perfect amount both ways and was finding the edge.

“I remember how relentless it was, him hitting his length hard.

“It wasn’t that it was fast but how hard he hit the pitch and that he made the ball talk.”

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The first Ashes Test is only days away and I am hearing a lot of talk about the Australia team supposedly being in disarray over selection decisions.

Clearly, losing two quality fast bowlers in Pat Cummins and Josh Hazlewood to injuries is a huge spanner in the works, doubly so when Cummins is the captain.

But what team wouldn’t suffer if they lost two key players? England did not have Ben Stokes and Jofra Archer in the side for their last Test, against India at The Oval in July. They lost.

If you take out the scenario of the two injuries, Australia have only ever had one decision to make, which is around the top order.

Australia have not had a consistent opening partner for Usman Khawaja since David Warner retired at the beginning of last year. Five different men have been tried in the space of 18 months.

They have tried band-aid options, perhaps trying to replicate the success of moving Justin Langer up from number three to open with Matthew Hayden in the team I played in.

Realistically, if you lose an opener, you should replace him with an opener. You wouldn’t replace a fast bowler with a wicketkeeper. For that reason, Australia will probably end the shuffling of the order, leave Marnus Labuschagne at number three and give a debut to Jake Weatherald.

From there, the rest of the batting order takes care of itself. Cameron Green drops to fill the all-rounder role at number six, meaning Beau Webster is squeezed out. It’s tough on Webster, who has done nothing wrong.

The other criticism heading towards Australia is the age of the team. The likely XI for the first Test at Optus Stadium on Friday will only have Green under the age of 30.

I really do not see that as a problem in this Ashes series. The reason this team has grown old together is because it has been successful together.

With age comes experience. I played in a team in a similar situation in the 2006-07 Ashes. We only had Michael Clarke under the age of 30 and we won 5-0.

Maybe it will be an issue for the selectors over the next 12 to 18 months as players end their careers, but it’s not one to be addressed now. So long as a player is performing, age does not matter.

I do wonder about the process that has led to both Cummins and Hazlewood being made unavailable for the first Test.

It feels like things have changed so much in the decision-making surrounding players, that backroom staff and those outside the dressing room might have too much influence.

We did not have routine scans. If you were not quite at 100%, but felt you could push through and play, you played.

Now there is a trend to err on the side of caution. If a player feels a niggle, he is told to rest.

If I had gone through routine scans, I like to think I would have been OK. I only had a short delivery stride, so there was not the strain on my back. It was in good condition when I played and still is today.

But my old new-ball partner Jason Gillespie reckons he would never have played a Test if he was put through routine scans. His back would have lit up like a Christmas tree.

The hope for Australia is Cummins and Hazlewood are fit for the second Test in Brisbane, because England will certainly view the home attack in a different light without them.

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It is a huge boost for Wood, one of the fastest bowlers to ever play for England, albeit in a 37-Test career that has been blighted by injuries.

He has not played a Test since August 2024, first because of an elbow problem, then the knee injury.

Despite the long absence, England were keen for Wood to be in their XI for the first Test, alongside Jofra Archer, to hit Australia with pace on what is expected to be a lively surface at Optus Stadium.

The tourists hinted at their plans for the Ashes opener by naming five pace bowlers, including Wood and Archer, and no front-line spinner in their XI for the tour game against the Lions.

Now England will have to weigh up including Wood in their team for the first Test, and how it would affect the balance of their attack if he is not risked. Josh Tongue could be included as a like-for-like replacement, or England could turn to a spin option in Shoaib Bashir or Will Jacks.

If Wood does not play in the first Test, there is the option to build his fitness in Lions fixtures.

The Lions meet a Cricket Australia XI at Lilac Hill at the same time as the first Test, then move on to a two-day pink-ball game against a Prime Minister’s XI in Canberra.

Meanwhile, leg-spinner Rehan Ahmed has been ruled out of the remainder of the Lions’ tour with a leg injury.

Ahmed missed out on selection for the Ashes squad when England preferred Jacks as their second spinner.

The 21-year-old will return to the UK but is expected to be fit to play for Hobart Hurricanes in the Big Bash League from next month.

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Young Hampshire fast bowler Eddie Jack has signed a new deal at the county that will see him stay through to the end of the 2028 season.

The 20-year-old, who made his Hampshire debut in 2023, took 26 wickets in 16 matches last season for the Rose and Crown.

Jack is currently on tour with England Lions in Australia where they have four matches from 13 November to 8 December.

“I’m delighted to be offered the chance to continue playing for my boyhood club for the next three years,” Jack said., external

“All the coaching staff and my fellow teammates have been instrumental in accelerating and enriching my development as a player.

“I look forward to the continuation of that journey as I strive to advance my own game, and we continue to push for trophies across all three formats.”

The pace bowler has taken 41 wickets for the Young Lions with best figures of 5-57 coming against Bangladesh in 2023.

He has since gone on to represent England Lions twice against India A and was also recently awarded an ECB development contract for the first time.

Giles White, director of cricket, said: “Eddie is an exciting young talent, and we’re thrilled he’s staying at the club for another three years.

“The fact he’s with the England Lions at the moment is testament to the hard work he’s put in over the last few years, progressing through our academy and pushing for places in the first XI.

“He’s an exciting young player with an excellent attitude and a real hunger to develop his game, and we’re looking forward to seeing how he continues to grow during his time here at the Utilita Bowl.”

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