Fast bowlers are the Formula One engines of a cricket team: purring and powerful when they want to be, painfully vulnerable when bits fall off. When a partnership works, and sticks – Dennis Lillee and Jeff Thomson, Curtly Ambrose and Courtney Walsh, Wasim Akram and Waqar Younis – they carry the team on their shoulders. When that partnership fades, teams often falter, losing their identity.
It is nearly 17 years ago that Michael Vaughan and Peter Moores informed Matthew Hoggard and Steve Harmison that they were to be dropped for the second Test against New Zealand at Wellington, replaced by Jimmy Anderson and Stuart Broad. Harmison played only six more Tests and Hoggard never played for England again, while Anderson and Broad went on to be the most successful bowling pair in Test history.
But as they too slipped away (or in Anderson’s case, had to be ushered towards the exit), it seemed that England were going to suffer some sort of existential crisis. But that has not been the case because into the giant footsteps of Anderson and Broad have stepped Gus Atkinson and Brydon Carse.
It has been a quiet revolution. Atkinson, with his boots-together pigeon-stepped approach, does not instantly look a huge threat, but his wobble seam and swinging deliveries at 90mph have been a sensation. His first year in Test cricket has brought him 52 wickets in 11 Tests at an average of 22.15, including a 10-wicket debut and three five wicket-hauls. Throw in a Test hundred against Sri Lanka, and a hat-trick at Wellington and even the laid-back Atkinson must be allowing himself a smile into his Christmas stocking.
His partner, Carse, had to wait until his three-month ban for historic betting offences had run its course before he was picked for the first of his five Tests for England, in Multan in October. But what he has produced since – physical intimidation, 90mph pace, huge bounce off a length and a seemingly endless supply of wicket-taking balls – has been everything that Durham could have whispered into England’s ear. His year reads: five Tests, 27 wickets at 19 including a 10-wicket haul in his third Test at Christchurch. His teammate at Chester-le-Street, the England captain, Ben Stokes, says that he “turned out to be the cricketer I always thought he could be”.
If England were thinking about the Ashes – of course they’re thinking about the Ashes – they will be rubbing their hands in anticipation, with Matthew Potts, Josh Hull and Chris Woakes in their other hand, and Mark Wood and Jofra Archer being lightly pummelled on the physio bench.
But it isn’t only England’s men who have the Ashes on their mind. It is a much more pressing concern for England’s women, whose tour starts in Sydney on 12 January. It’s a seven-match series (including three Twenty20s and three one-day internationals) that concludes with a day-night Test at the MCG. They are coming off a confidence-inducing multi-format series in South Africa, winning the T20 and ODI series and – for the first time in a decade – winning a Test.
Instrumental in the win in Bloemfontein were England’s opening bowlers, the two Laurens, Filer and Bell, both 23, both bouncing with potential. Filer is faster, wilder, a whirl of long legs, who had South Africa’s batters jerking their necks and sometimes on the ground in an attempt to avoid her suffocating bouncers, even bothering the zen-like Laura Wolvaardt. Bell, the player of the match with eight wickets, is altogether neater and more exacting, while still carrying a different threat of her own.
“They both bring something different, the two Laurens,” England’s captain, Heather Knight, said after the Test win. “Filer just seems to make things happen, which is amazing. There’s a real temptation sometimes to want to bowl her longer because you always feel like she’s going to take a wicket when she’s on. But I think she’s at her best when she’s fresh and she bowls sharp spells.
“Lauren Bell at the other end was outstanding, the way she was able to control things. It’s a really prime example of the work that she’s done to become a better cricketer and have different skills in her toolbox, and use those skills in different conditions when she needs them.”
For once, both England teams can go into the new year with a tinselled pile of fabulous fast bowlers. Whether Australia have noticed is another matter.
