Pacy Wood’s biggest battle
Happy
MARK WOOD has been told he must tinker with his bowling action to save his England career.
Tearaway Wood, the fastest bowler in the country, has had three ankle operations in the past 13 months.
Now, he has been warned that repeating old bad habits will cause further stress at the front of the joint.
After the most recent KO in the autumn, it was decided at a meeting between England’s medical staff, fast bowling coach Kevin Shine and head coach Trevor Bayliss that the Durham dynamo could no longer splay his feet in delivery stride if he wanted to stay injury-free.
Wood said: “I have been tweaking my action at Loughborough with Kevin Shine over the last few weeks. Maybe during last summer I got into bad habits and that certainly seemed to be the case because I hated looking at my action on replays. “The work has been to make sure that my feet don’t cross over when I land.
“Everything is in a straight line at the moment, so when it comes to the full-blooded action, bowling at 100 per cent in the new year, it won’t be as bad as it was when I caused that freakish injury.
“I was just trying to bowl as fast as I could and that meant resting between games rather than doing the drill work necessary.”
Wood was forced out of England’s winter tour squads and back into the hands of a surgeon after scans revealed bone at the rear of his ankle had completely snapped off.
He added:“Structurally, there is nothing wrong with my ankle, so it’s just down to me now to work hard and I am prepared to do that to get back into that England team.
“I am not having any trouble whatsoever at the minute and I can’t wait to get back up to full speed.
“If anything, I feel I can get more consistent, so my pace should be up there, better, and I’ll be stronger, come next season. Even more smooth and efficient than I’ve ever been before.”
Wood heads to an ECB fast-bowling camp in Potchefstroom, South Africa, next month and could yet be considered for Eoin Morgan’s team’s limited-overs tour of the Caribbean in February and March.