COACH REVEALS SECRETS OF HOW TOBY BECAME THE TERMINATOR

TOBY ROLAND-JONES doesn’t have wow factor. He doesn’t bowl at 90mph and he doesn’t swing the ball round corners. What he does is get good batsmen out. That’s the verdict of Richard Johnson, bowling coach and good friend of the England seam sensation who took eight for 129 in his Test debut at The Oval — including a first-innings five-for which ripped through South Africa’s top order. The 29-year-old has been bothering batsmen in the County Championship for some time now, shooting to prominence with a hat-trick against Yorkshire to win the county title for Middlesex on last year’s final day. So if not pace or movement through the air, what is it about Roland-Jones that makes him so dangerous? ‘If you were to ask batsmen they’d say everything feels like it’s coming in to the bat, but he actually gets a bit of away shape a lot of the time,’ Johnson explains to Sportsmail. ‘The angle he bowls at means

some balls come in to the batsman and some move away — it makes him unpredictable and very hard to line up. ‘In county cricket, he makes people play and miss more than anyone I’ve known. ‘He also hits the bat hard. He bowls a heavy ball, hitting the bat on the splice so you feel the contact more than when you middle it. Because of his height he gets quite a steep bounce and hits the bat higher up. ‘The thing with Tobes is that he opens up good players and gets them out. You see that when you watch him every day but if you don’t see him that often he doesn’t have that wow factor. ‘He got Hashim Amla out twice at The Oval! That first dismissal (squaring Amla up and flicking his glove on its way through to Jonny Bairstow) was the kind all fast bowlers want. And it was classic RoJo.’ The lack of eye-catching pace and swing Johnson alludes to, coupled with England’s rich supply of quality fast bowlers, might explain why it has taken Roland-Jones (right) until his late 20s to make the Test team. In fact, after representing Middlesex in age-group cricket in his youth, he dropped out of the county scene altogether to attend Leeds University and it was only off the back of his impressive performances for Surrey Premier League side Sunbury that he was brought back into the set-up in 2010. And Johnson, who has worked closely with Roland-Jones from his time at Sunbury throughout his senior Middlesex career, is convinced the bowler’s long road to the top has provided him with an appreciation of his own game that will prove invaluable at the highest level. ‘He’s learned to understand his action and understand that not every day is going to be great,’ Johnson says. ‘A lot of people are so up and down, when it doesn’t feel good every time they start to panic. Toby doesn’t, and that’s a massive trait. He’ll run up one day and think, “It’s not feeling great but I’m going to do a job — whatever I’ve got today is what I’ve got and I’ll deal with it”. This is what the real top bowlers do. ‘He’s also got quite a basic, repeatable action, which means he’s rarely expensive. He’s worked out why he bowls well when he bowls well. ‘He’s very rounded and mature, and he doesn’t get too excited or too down about things. He looks at everything from a very level-headed perspective. ‘The way he bowls reflects his personality — very reliable, a real solid bloke. The sort you want good things to happen to.’