Mills ready to make quick impression
T20 has saved paceman’s career after battling spinal condition, and now he is poised for England debut
Tymal Mills knows that a decade ago he would now be “looking for a new job” but instead the fastest bowler in the country has the chance on Tuesday to attract the Indian Premier League and Big Bash scouts if he makes a good impression on his England Twenty20 debut.
His selection for the one-off Twenty20 match against Sri Lanka at the Ageas Bowl is one of the most exciting of recent times for England given the rarity that our game produces a bowler who can hurl it down at 94 mph.
Pace is impossible to coach, and it is not since the days of Devon Malcolm and David Lawrence that England have picked a bowler as naturally quick as Mills. Steven Finn briefly reached the mid-90 mphs but he relies on bounce and hitting the seam for his wickets and his pace has dipped significantly in recent months. With the growing importance of Twenty20 the addition of raw left-arm pace can only make Trevor Bayliss’s team stronger.
England’s Australian coach has bemoaned the lack of speed in an English game in which teams prefer fast-medium bowlers who can hit the seam consistently. The schedule here makes it nigh on impossible to bowl fast for any consistent length of time in county cricket without becoming injured and Mills, 23, was the latest casualty when he was told by doctors last year that his back would not hold up to playing four-day cricket.
He has a narrowing of the spinal column, a rare genetic condition that took many months to diagnose and, at times, he feared for his health as doctors at one stage investigated the possibility of tumours on his spine.
The result was that he can no longer play red-ball cricket so he has joined the ranks of Twenty20 specialists; a second chance that offers the potential for lucrative employment performing the world over in front of huge audiences. Any IPL owners or Big Bash coaches in Australia only need to look at YouTube for footage of Mills bowling for Sussex to Chris Gayle last month to see what he can do. He roughed up Gayle, the best Twenty20 batsman of all time, before bowling him with a yorker clocked at 93.3mph. One Sky commentator felt he bowled frightening pace on a par with Mitchell Johnson when he terrorised England three years ago.
Bayliss first watched Mills when he peppered some England batsmen in the nets in Pretoria during the winter and said recently many were “queuing up to get in the spinners’ net” instead. With another World Twenty20 to be added to the schedule in 2018, probably to be played on the rock-hard decks of South Africa, Mills’s left-arm pace could be the difference that helps England move from runners-up to tournament winners.
“I will always try and bowl quick. I don’t know anything different. I go out and just want to bowl fast. Especially now I am only playing this format I try and go out there and for those four overs I try my best,” he told The Sunday
Telegraph. “Every ball I bowl is an effort ball. If you can get guys like him [Gayle] out it only helps your case no end. We knew he was the big wicket we needed to get. I was coming down the hill with the wind behind me at Hove so perhaps the stars were aligned for me that night. It was a big wicket for me to get and I was pretty pumped when I got it.” It was handy timing, for the selectors met a few days later to pick the squad for the one-day series and Twenty20 against Sri Lanka and felt it was time to give Mills a chance.
“This is a massive opportunity. It is what I want to be doing and where I want to be,” he said. “It is a one-off game so hopefully they give me a crack. If I do well in this game then there is potentially one more for England later in the summer [against Pakistan] and then, looking further down the road, hopefully I will get some gigs around the world in the winter. If I play for England that is going to help my case no end.”
Mills has been timed in televised matches regularly reaching 94mph and Kevin Shine, the England and Wales Cricket Board fast bowling coach, has said in the past that, when he takes balls from him wearing a mitt, there are “flames coming out of the back of them”.
Pace alone is not enough, though, and Mills has worked on being more
consistent. He also bowls a welldisguised slower ball that he thinks is 20mph slower than his stock delivery. “I’ve just worked on being more consistent. I was away for most of the winter with the ECB and just bowled to work on consistency of hitting length,” he said. “It is about working on line and lengths in the powerplay and cutting out balls outside off stump that can be cut. It is about learning to build as many dots as possible at the start.
“With the slower ball I just have to make sure I bowl it with a quick arm. If not it can be a bit loopy and people can see it early so you have to bowl a slower ball with good pace in the arm so you get a bit of extra bounce off the wicket, which makes it harder to play.”
Mills has taken seven wickets at an average of 22 for Sussex in seven matches this summer and admits he
‘Every ball I bowl is an effort ball. If you can get guys like Gayle out it helps your case no end’ ‘This is a massive opportunity. It is what I want to be doing and where I want to be’
has been either “really good or pretty poor”, so England will have to be patient and make this selection more than a one-off.
His back is in good condition, although he says plans to play 50-over cricket this season are “on the back burner”. He is not lifting big weights in the gym and is concentrating on keeping his body supple. Being lithe is more important for a fast bowler than carrying too much muscle bulk.
“My body is still allowing me to bowl quick and I am doing a lot of work to help me do that,” he said. “My back does not give me any problems day to day, it is only when I bowl loads of overs so it is more about working on posture in the gym and balance and co-ordination to control my body.
“I am quite explosive so it is controlling maximum movement. It is when I get out of my [movement] range that my joints suffer. My gym programme is quite complicated and it would take me all day to describe it.”