My family put £100 on me to play for England... and didn’t tell me!
New boy Matty Fisher on a secret flutter, idolising Jimmy and how his father’s death drives him on
MATTY FISHER was nervously checking his phone during training on Tuesday when his heart started racing after noticing he had a voicemail from an unknown number.
‘I was straight on it. I thought, “Is this it?”,’ the Yorkshire seamer tells Sportsmail. ‘It turned out it was just my solicitor… she owed me money from my house purchase. I was loving getting a bit of money back but it wasn’t what I was wanting!’
The rest of that afternoon was agony. The silence was deafening, though rumours were starting to swirl. Then, after he had returned home from Headingley, the call he had hoped for finally came.
‘I was on the sofa and my phone flashed up, “Paul Collingwood WhatsApp Audio”,’ says Fisher with a smile you sense he will wear for weeks.
‘For some reason, I stood up. It seemed too relaxed to just take the call on the sofa! Colly just said “Congratulations” and I was buzzing. I wanted to get off the phone and tell everyone. We have a family WhatsApp group and I immediately did a group call. They all went nuts!’
For many fans, news of Fisher’s call from England’s interim head coach will have been a surprise. But for the 24-year-old, it was less of a shock, having been put on alert by ECB performance director Mo Bobat after impressing for the Lions in Australia.
The real bombshell was not Fisher’s inclusion in the squad for next month’s Test series in the Caribbean, but the omission of bowling greats Jimmy Anderson and Stuart Broad. So how does it feel to be a rookie replacing two legends with 1,177 Test wickets between them?
‘Surreal,’ admits Fisher, one of two uncapped seamers along with Saqib Mahmood. ‘There is a bit of extra pressure but I am trying not to put that on myself. The disappointment is not being able to tour with them so I can chat about their experience. Since I first fell in love with cricket, they’ve been in the England team and have been incredible. They are players you aspire to be half as good as.’
Anderson is the bowler Fisher would pretend to be when he practised with his two older brothers in the net they built in their back garden growing up near York.
‘I’ve modelled how I bowl on Jimmy,’ he says, sitting in a cafe under the East Stand at Headingley. ‘Even in games, sometimes if I am falling away, I try to think of Anderson’s action, just to get more side-on.’
It is not by coincidence, then, that his main weapon is his ability to move the red ball both ways. It is a skill which — along with his mentality and maturity — has had him earmarked by England for some time, regardless of his modest first-class record of 63 wickets from 21 games.
‘There are many county bowlers with more wickets who probably feel hard done by,’ concedes Fisher. ‘But my attributes hopefully suit international cricket. My best asset is my skill level — swinging it and seaming it. I’ve also extended my run-up by about 10 feet and that has helped me with pace.’
To those who followed Fisher’s early career, international cricket always seemed a matter of when not if. Indeed, unbeknown to him until this conversation, his mother and brothers placed a £100 bet on him to represent England at 50-1 when he was 14.
‘Oh, wow!’ he replies when Sportsmail informs him of the secret family flutter 10 years ago. ‘I’d heard a rumour something had gone on but I didn’t know the details. That’s amazing.’
Those odds actually looked fairly generous just 18 months after they were offered as, in June 2013, Fisher broke a 91-year-old record to become the youngest cricketer to play in a competitive county game. Aged 15 years and 212 days, he took one for 40 in a 40-over match for Yorkshire against Leicestershire and earned his first brush with fame.
‘Looking back now, it feels like that was someone else,’ says Fisher, who also made his senior debut for club side Sheriff Hutton Bridge when he was just seven, forcing the local league to bring in a rule which mandated players must be at least 11. ‘When you are young, you feel invincible and take it in your stride. Everyone was like, “He’s going to play for England, he’s going to do this, he’s going to do that”.
‘I remember Michael Vaughan used to put me in his next World Cup team, next Ashes team. That all probably put pressure on me and led me to wanting it to happen so fast.’
Instead, Fisher has had to learn to be patient, largely because of a run of injuries. Already in his career, he has had issues with his back, hamstring, side, shoulder, stomach, thumb and toes.
The former England Under 19 captain also had two operations as a teenager on his left ear after suffering a skin growth which left him partially deaf. Last summer, after another injury setback, he hit breaking point.
‘I have definitely been in bad places,’ reveals Fisher. ‘Last year, I was driving back from a secondteam game at Essex after I had suffered a recurrence of an ab injury and I was crying to Mum on the phone. She asked me to pull over and stop.
‘I said, “I am sick of it. I work so hard and this keeps happening”. There was definitely a question of, “Do I want to do this any more?”. What I was putting my body through felt almost like self-harm.
‘But from that moment, a lot of my stress about injuries went. I started reading books and that has made a massive difference. Just being able to lose yourself for a little period.
‘Before, in the nets, I’d feel my hamstring, calf, be prodding in my ab region. Now, I don’t even think about it.’
Fisher’s resilience is not just down to overcoming injury. He has also had to deal with grief. When he was 14, he lost his father Phil to bowel cancer.
‘It is probably the hardest thing someone can go through,’ says Fisher. ‘I don’t think I could have got through it without the support of my mum, brothers and rest of my family.
‘Dad is the biggest part of me getting to where I’ve got to. Mum was the one I’d go to about school, but with Dad it was all about cricket.
‘When I am playing, that’s when I get the connection with him.
‘Against Somerset in the County Championship last year, when I was on for my fifth wicket, goosebumps started coming because I really wanted that moment with him. It was as if he gave me extra energy to get my yorker in for the five-for. I hold the ball up for Dad every time I get five wickets.’
For Fisher, then, a Test debut against West Indies would mean much more than just fulfilling his own lifelong dream.
‘I always think of Dad,’ he adds. ‘If I was to play and the person who presented my cap mentioned him, I would probably get emotional. With the perspective of what has happened with Dad and my injuries, I have learned to just enjoy my cricket.
‘It could be my first and last tour. I will treat it as an experience no one can ever take away.’