England have got three giants that could become answer to Cummins, Hazlewood and Starc

England have an answer to the three fast bowlers who have powered Australia to world titles in every format over the last decade.

Pat Cummins, Josh Hazlewood and Mitchell Starc have taken exactly 900 Test wickets between them. In some living memories, the only other pace bowler Australia have used is Scott Boland.

Now England can boast of three enormously tall quick bowlers who are so young they have not finished growing: Daniel Hogg of Durham, who brushed aside Nottinghamshire in his first championship match last month; Josh Hull, Leicestershire’s left-armer who has been selected for England’s third Test against Sri Lanka; and Harry Moore of Derbyshire, who became Derbyshire’s youngest ever player last summer aged 16.

England have produced tall, young fast bowlers before, but the vast majority have withered on the vine before ripening. Alan Ward, Bob Willis and Graham Dilley were all plucked from county cricket at an early age, like Hull, and sent to Australia to do great things. But when they came home, they were still expected to bowl 500 overs a season for their counties to earn their bread. The system now is completely different, and a similar pathway to that which produced Cummins, Hazlewood and Starc down under.

The young giants

Daniel Hogg, 19
6ft 7in

When Hogg made his first-class debut for Durham last month, he took seven wickets for 66 runs in Nottinghamshire’s second innings. He ran in straight and bowled with a sustainable action that should minimise the stress fractures that are the fast bowler’s occupational hazard. Anyone is liable to run through Notts’ batting as it does not translate talents into runs, but what stood out here was, firstly, Hogg’s height and secondly the speed of his bowling arm. He has whip in his right shoulder, which is reminiscent of Cummins.

Hogg went to Durham School and now plays for Burnopfield CC, the club of the former England batsman Colin Milburn. “If he keeps going he’s a great prospect,” says Durham’s Academy Director John Windows. “He has the height, he has the athleticism and he swings it – and it is often harder for tall bowlers to get the backward rotation to make the ball swing. He’s also opened the batting for our Under-18s in T20 so he’s not a tailender.”

Josh Hull, 20
6ft 7in

Hull was not born in a barn but he grew up in one, as did another England left-arm bowler Wilfred Rhodes, the highest first-class wicket-taker of all time. Hull’s father, a farmer, gave him and his younger brother a barn to play cricket in during Covid. When Northamptonshire did not make the most of the elder Hull, Leicestershire stepped in and gave him the right amount of exposure in white-and red-ball games.

“He is by no means the finished article as he very well knows,” says the South African former pace bowler Alfonso Thomas, who is Leicestershire’s head coach, in an important warning amid the rave reviews. “But he has all the attributes and potential to be a top international bowler. He just loves bowling, he is a fantastic kid and an absolute dream to work with.”

Harry Moore, 17
6ft 6in

Every year or so the former England captain Michael Vaughan approaches the Telegraph team in the press box during a Test and says two words – the name of a young player he has just spotted and rates. Earlier this summer, after watching the England v Sri Lanka Under-19 Test at Cheltenham, he did not say “Archie Vaughan”, as he might well have done, but “Harry Moore.”

Many Derbyshire fast bowlers have been coal miners. Moore comes from the pit that is Repton, where the director of cricket is now Martin Speight, who at Sedbergh taught Harry Brook much of what he knows. After debuting for Derbyshire at 16, Moore has played white-ball games this summer – no championship debut yet – and also hit quick runs. If his action needs a little tinkering so that he stands taller, like Hogg, he is two years younger. His temperament was well illustrated on his debut when a top-edge off his bowling sailed towards mid-wicket – and he made sure he was the one who caught it.

Learning from Australia’s big figures

If Hogg, Hull and Moore are not simply to become an answer but the answer to Cummins, Hazlewood and Starc, they will have to be nurtured like them.

Cummins endured multiple stress fractures and injuries after his spectacular Test debut aged 18. Since then he has never bowled anywhere near 300 overs in an Australian first-class season – usually around 1200 balls or 200 overs. The amount of his white-ball bowling has increased but, as one-day internationals of 50 overs-a-side have reduced in number, he has usually been limited to the four overs allowed to bowlers in T20 games.

Hazlewood, since 2008, has been kept on a diet of approximately 1000 balls per first-class season for New South Wales and Australia: frequently fewer than 1000, and never so many as 2000.

Starc grew up on a diet of fewer than 200 first-class overs per Australian season and did not extend his workload until fully grown. Of this trio, he is the only one to have delivered as many as 2000 balls in a first-class season.

Fortunately for Hogg, Hull, Moore and other talented quick bowlers in England – like James Minto of Durham, a left-armer who has been timed at 84mph aged 16 – they are now treated just as carefully as their Australian counterparts.

Sports scientists working for the ECB have set out the guidelines for each age-group of pace bowlers. Given the right restrictions on the amount they can bowl, the right guidance on diet, conditioning and gym-work, their bodies will develop “the scaffolding” that will enable them to bowl fast for longer. Hitherto in England it has so often been a case of the more a young fast bowler bowls, the slower he gets.

Pace bowlers aged 18-19 are recommended to bowl between 24 – 28 overs per week. There is also a maximum of 18 overs in one day, and seven overs in one spell. This allows a bowler to have a major impact on a day’s play, and stretch himself to the limit, but prevents him bowling day after day and thereby risking injury. More specifically, they are recommended to not bowl more than four days in a week, and no more than two days back to back.

In seventeenth-century Britain thieves, pickpockets and other criminals used to say: “From Hell, Hull and Halifax the Good Lord deliver us!” – Hull being famous for its prison, Halifax for its gibbets.

If not by the time of the next Ashes in Australia in 15 months, then by the 2027 series in England, perhaps Australia’s supporters will be heard to say: “From Hogg, Hull and Moore the Good Lord deliver us!”