Kit Harris asks England’s busiest seamers if there is too much cricket.
Too much cricket. That’s what we’re told, time and again. Look what it’s done to England’s bowlers. Five of the 15 seamers the Test team has used in the last three years have suffered stress fractures of the back. So has Tom Curran. So has Jack Leach – a spinner, for heaven’s sake. We ask too much of them, it seems.
And yet, bowlers in England have a lighter workload than ever. In the 1950s, the busiest English bowlers – the 50 men to deliver the most balls, across all formats, in a summer season – averaged 1,000 overs in a season more than once. Today, that average has more than halved.
This trend is in part down to a reduction in the number of overs of spin. Slow bowlers were unsurprisingly worked hardest, given how much they can do in a day. They had more helpful pitches, too. The range between the busiest and 50th-busiest has also halved since the 1950s, mainly because far fewer of those 50 are spinners.
But the decline in spin isn’t the only factor. And there’s a paradox here: how can it be that there’s too much cricket, when the workload has halved?
The answer may lie how we treat our fast bowlers. Since 1946, only eight seamers have sent down most overs in a season (Derek Shackleton, of Hampshire, did so eight times). Five still here to tell their tale – and all have concerns about workloads.
Bob Cottam, who spent his career at Hampshire and Northamptonshire, was county cricket’s No. 1 workhorse in 1969. He later coached Warwickshire and Somerset, and was England’s fast bowling coach between 1998 and 2001, under David Lloyd. Throughout 2022, he sounded warnings that, far from working too hard, bowlers were not working hard enough. “Gradually I have come to terms with the modern stuff,” he wrote on Twitter. “But five weeks off and then expect to be in rhythm? No, no, no!” He advocated the return of 12 overs per bowler in one-day cricket, “so we can find out what true depth of bowling we have.”
Is this a case of “we did it a lot better in my day?” That would be a harsh interpretation, given Cottam became a top-level coach three decades after he headed the workload table. And one of his England charges, Andy Caddick – 24 years his junior – has similar views.
“If I had more than a week off, I needed three or four days to get back into it,” says Caddick. “And anyway, I couldn’t have had a week off, even if I’d wanted it! There were no England central contracts. Between international games, you were with your county. And you bowled.” Caddick did so more than anyone else in 1998 and 1999, while Somerset team-mate Steffan Jones – now working for Rajasthan Royals in the IPL – matched that feat in 2001.
“Between 2000 and 2001, I had one week off,” recalls Jones. “And look at my performances in those years. They were my best seasons. I was a rhythm bowler. I needed to bowl every week. A lot of fast-medium bowlers felt like that.”
It is a view shared by Warwickshire’s Chris Rushworth who, when at Durham, totted up the most overs in 2015. “When I bowl after a long break – and I get a few of those, since I don’t play the Blast – I need time to get back into rhythm,” he says. “Sometimes three games. It takes a while.”
Tim Munton, busiest in 1994, concurs. “I wanted to bowl every day. The last thing I wanted, when I was in form, was a week off. I felt very lucky to make a living playing cricket. It was my dream. And the heavy workload was part and parcel of it. I used to come uphill for Warwickshire, into the wind, while Allan Donald or Gladstone Small were at the other end. That was my job. That was what I did.”
All agree that the attitude changed after 2000, when ECB’s fast bowling directives were introduced, limiting teenagers to a certain number of overs in a spell, and in a day. A spell of more than seven overs was outlawed – and still is – even at Under-19 level.
“Tom Cartwright [on the list in 1967 and 1972] used to have me bowling unchanged from one end,” says Jones. “But now we put people in bubble-wrap, and it’s led to a generation of fragile bowlers.”
“The worst thing that ever happened in English cricket is when the ECB limited how much youngsters could bowl,” says Caddick. “We’re neglecting the requirement for the body to learn bowling – to get used to doing it. Now, we let them bowl a few overs, then send them for endless gym work.” He believes we are doing young fast bowlers a disservice. “A stress fracture is the body saying ‘I don’t like doing this’. If you have restrictions at a younger age, you just defer the bigger, unfamiliar workload until later. We used to know if a bowler could handle the workload when he was 17. These days, they might be 24 before we realise their body can’t cope. What sort of age is that, to look for a new career?”
Munton is full of praise for the modern focus on strength and conditioning. “Without doubt the science of making bowlers fitter and stronger is a benefit,” he says. “But the type of work is very different. You can spend more time in the gym getting fit, and less time bowling. Had I grown up with the fast bowling directives in force, there’s no way I could have become a professional cricketer. I got there by bowling myself into shape.”
Jones spells it out. “The current bowlers are better athletes, but not necessarily better bowlers, in a physical sense. They have gym strength, but not labour strength. Bench pressing in the gym doesn’t cut it. You’re not going to become a better piano player by practising the guitar.” And Rushworth sees it the same way: “The bowling action places unique demands on the body. Six months in the gym can’t replicate those. But everyone is spending a lot more time in the gym.”
It’s not obvious that a gym-led approach is improving durability. “Bowlers are told not to bowl as much, to prevent injury,” says Rushworth. “But they still seem to be getting injured, don’t they?” He says part of the challenge is knowing whether a player is injured, or merely stiff. “You’re always going to have a slight ache or pain or stiffness. Nowadays, that’s seen as an injury niggle, and the bowler is rested until they’re completely fresh. Well, it takes me two or three games to get back into it.”
Some have wondered whether earlier generations coped with their workloads by operating at 80% much of the time, especially in County Championship matches where there was little at stake.
Caddick’s response is unprintable. Jones doesn’t buy it, either: “My job was at stake! I was paid to get wickets. I was never 80%, regardless of the pitch or situation.” Munton concedes there’s a hint of truth to it, though. “In the 1990s, you’d bowl at a certain pace, then surprise the batter with an effort ball,” he says. “Now, the surprise element is the slower ball. I think that’s changed.”
There is an acceptance, too, that not everyone benefits from racking up overs every week. “The rhythm bowlers do,” says Jones. “But not the out-and-out quicks.” Caddick contrasts himself with Darren Gough, with whom he shared the new ball for England. “I needed to bowl every week,” he says. “Goughie didn’t. He was an impact player. He bowled in short bursts. That’s where England have gone wrong with Jofra Archer. You can’t manufacture a genuinely fast bowler, and Jofra was naturally quick. Now he should have managed carefully, but they overbowled him.”
Jones acknowledges that demands on the modern player have increased in other ways. “Look, I don’t want to be a poacher-turned-gamekeeper. There is definitely added stress on their sporting life. There’s much more travelling, more media. They’re pushed from pillar to post.” Rushworth cites travel as the biggest stress on his working life. But the idea of less cricket, less bowling, is anathema to all four. “Personally, I’d hate that,” says Rushworth. “Bowling is my job. It’s what I want to do.”
Kit Harris is Assistant Editor of Wisden Cricketers’ Almanack.
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