Rob Key has a simple message for quick bowlers in county cricket as he plots the next stage of England’s Bazball development. “I don’t care how many wickets you take. I want to know how hard you are running in, how hard you are hitting the pitch and are you able to sustain pace at 85-88mph.”
Key is at Kings Cross about to board a train north to meet Ben Stokes, his old mate Steve Harmison and England fast bowling coach Neil Killeen to discuss how they give the England captain a “cutting edge” with the ball, which means injecting youth and pace into the attack to develop a “battery” of fast bowlers.
He reveals there is a “grand plan” for getting Jofra Archer to the Ashes, where Key accepts England need a minimum of five fit and firing quick bowlers. Archer will play only white-ball cricket this year with a view to being “robust” enough for a Test return against India at home next summer and then the Ashes. “The real elite have great economy rates and great strike rates, someone like Bumrah, and Jofra is like that too. We take each day as it comes with Jofra. If it happens, let’s wait and see.”
Key also has a clear message for Ollie Robinson to up his pace and prove he has the desire to be a Test bowler. Robinson made a poor return to Test cricket in Ranchi recently, bowling way below 80mph and limped off for treatment again during the match. But Robinson averages just 22 in Test cricket at a strike rate of 49 and can bowl out any team on his day.
“Ollie Robinson is one of the best bowlers in the world at 83mph, but not at 75mph. It is clear what we need and what we want to do. I don’t care if he runs 2k time trials quickly. We will do what we can to help him with that but it is his career. He could be one of England’s best ever bowlers but we will see where he ends up.”
England’s batting is not a problem
After a poor winter capped by a 4-1 defeat in India, a dismal World Cup, a drawn Ashes last summer and 14 wins from 23 Tests, Key knows it is time for England to go to the next level. He is content with the Test batting, believing they now have a settled top six and the power to add Harry Brook this summer.
When he took over two years ago it was the batting that needed attention and it has been revitalised, even if it remains inconsistent against the very best teams. Only one side (Sri Lanka) has a higher average per wicket than England’s 33.81 and nobody has scored quicker than their strike rate of 72.44 runs per 100 balls since Brendon McCullum and Stokes started work.
Now Key recognises it is time to look at the bowling and injecting pace and youth into the attack. Bowlers like Josh Tongue and Matt Potts will get their chance in the series against West Indies in July. Brydon Carse and Gus Atkinson too will be given games with Matthew Fisher and John Turner in contention as well. Key is also watching with interest the progress of 19-year-old Josh Hull at Leicestershire, who is a 6ft 7in left arm quick this week snapped up in the Hundred draft by the Manchester Originals.
“It is clear for me. The next thing we have to do is give the captain more weapons with the ball. He does not need to change anything. The way he leads is fantastic. Himself coming back to bowl will help but we have to make sure this now becomes one of the best bowling attacks England have ever had – more cutting edge, more pace,” Key says.
“Look at the last two years. We have stopped the bleeding. What we did was put a real focus on the batting. If you look at the batting over the last two years it has been at times extraordinary, at times frustrating for players and supporters, but bottom line is we have a world-class opening partnership, a No 3 who has become a leader in the group, and, whatever people think of the reverse paddle, we don’t have a problem with our No 4. We have Brook, Bairstow and the captain. It is stable and in two years we have players who have gone from not believing in themselves to now seeing that they can do it. The mark for them now is can they be the best in the world, not just be the best England player. Same with spin. We have now got four spinners that you think: ‘Here we go, there is something there.’ And we have not had options in spin for a long time.
“The next bit is the bowling. We had an experienced bowling attack for the last couple of years: Jimmy, Broady, Wood and Woakes, Robinson. That is why we contracted the young bowlers – Carse, Tongue, Potts and Atkinson on two-year deals, Fisher, Saqib Mahmood and Turner on development contracts. They have to take us forward now. Look at the best bowlers in the world: Cummins, Bumrah, Starc, Hazlewood, Siraj and Rabada. They are past the vertical bowling in and moving it away. They are all 85mph plus with high skill. That’s what we need.”
County cricket workarounds in the offing
England now have real time data on bowlers from cameras worn by umpires in county cricket but only around 10 per cent bowl at the 85-88mph level.
Key has accepted there is nothing he can do about county schedules and pitches that wear bowlers down; instead he has to come up with solutions like his plan to develop the spin bowlers Shoaib Bashir, Rehan Ahmed and Tom Hartley who will struggle for games in county cricket. He says Hartley’s best chance of playing for Lancashire, who have signed Nathan Lyon, is as a specialist batsman. “Yes, it is very sad, but what can you do?”
Instead Key’s plan is to take the spinners for away days in the summer and create match scenarios at the ECB academy working with spin bowling specialist coaches and consultants such as Graeme Swann. “We have plans for our spinners to get volume of bowling whether that means bowling all day at Loughborough and work with our coaches so they can keep on going. I saw them improve so much at the camp in Abu Dhabi. There is nothing better than playing but if you are only going to bowl three overs before lunch on a green top then that doesn’t make any difference.
“We are trying to work out how they can keep getting better. In the summer it will just be about physically taking them away and giving them a day of bowling trying to recreate scenarios and stuff like that. You are going to bowl 30 overs today, men round the bat and recreate as best we can rather than sit around and do nothing. It is not the same but it is better than nothing. English cricket has had a problem with spin so we need to do something in the summer, then take them away in the winter.”
Bazball rhetoric to be toned down
Key admits that England can be a bit smarter and tone down some of their overly confident public statements but he staunchly defends Bazball, believing it is too easily blamed for defeats and lazily labelled as slogging. He insists the players put winning first and that most of their comments are just an extension of the messaging from the management, which is designed to keep the players confident after defeats such as when they went 2-0 down in the Ashes.
“I remember saying to Baz when Bazball first got mentioned: ‘You watch, it won’t be long before we have to defend if this is the right thing or not.’ The idea is that to score runs you have to understand when to put bowlers under pressure and when to soak it up. Batting is understanding when those moments are. It has never been about going out slogging from ball one. We want people to feel bullet proof and 10ft tall, but not spout a lot of nonsense. That is about how you deal with the media, engage your brain at the right times. But I don’t want them to change the confidence they have.
“How we portray ourselves in public can irritate some but it comes from a good place. The thing has been misunderstood such as there is no accountability and we don’t care. These guys are striving to get better all the time which is what they have done. You don’t do that if you don’t care. As much as we can be smarter in what we say, these are young men learning how to deal with that kind of stuff so I don’t hold anyone to blame. I’m not overly concerned about it.”
The next staging post is the World Cup in June, where England defend the T20 crown they won in Australia in 2022. After a dismal World Cup in India in November, where they only narrowly scraped into the top eight, it is likely to be a job-defining tournament for head coach Matthew Mott with the team desperately needing to evolve.
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“Teams have three phases. There is the beginning when there is all this opportunity and thinking of new players and a new style. Then you sustain success like that white-ball team did for a long time but then there is a time when you start falling off and try to get back to where you were,” Key explains. “That is where we were at at the 50-over World Cup. We now have to get back with this team to the stage where they see the opportunity again of getting some new blood so we blend younger players with older players. We need them to think about what is the next evolution of our white-ball team, not trying to cling on to what we had.”
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