Mills beats the pain barrier to follow in footsteps of Malinga
Paceman is back in the England set-up and out to show today why he is regarded as game’s meanest death bowler
Lasith Malinga has claims to being the finest Twenty20 quick bowler. With a unique homespun method – a slingshot action developed growing up playing tennis-ball cricket on the beaches of Galle – Malinga won one T20 World Cup, four Indian Premier League titles and retired this week as the record wickettaker in international T20 cricket.
His brilliance was multifarious, with that extraordinary, whippy action, regular 90mph pace and a wonderful, intuitive sense of the right delivery to bowl at the right time. Yet the Sri Lankan’s singular hallmark is beyond doubt: the toecrushing yorker, which he mastered because the Galle beaches were too sandy to offer bounce.
More than half the 38-year-old’s wickets in IPL matches came when attempting a yorker. His successor as the best T20 pace bowler in the world, India’s Jasprit Bumrah, shares his mastery of the yorker; so does England’s Jofra Archer, perhaps his strongest rival.
And, yet, when you watch the quick bowler with the lowest economy rate at the death since the last T20 World Cup, you will see few yorkers.
Tymal Mills, recalled to England’s squad for the T20 World Cup starting next month, is the most parsimonious pace bowler in the final five overs of innings over the past five years, conceding just 7.4 an over since the World Cup final in April 2016. Over this period, he has delivered just 23 yorkers at the death – fewer than one every two matches.
Mills’s approach is also distinct. Eschewing orthodoxy at the end of an innings, he instead focuses on bowling back of a length. Yorkers, all agree, are best – but they are cricket’s death-or-glory ball. Err an inch or two in either direction, and they become full tosses or halfvolleys. Mills’s method allows for a little more margin for error.
“Taking into account that I can bowl left-arm, in and around 90 mph, those balls that are thigh pad, box height at that pace are generally, in my opinion, probably the second-most difficult ball to hit for six after the perfectly executed yorker,” Mills says. “Those balls aren’t quite full enough to get underneath or to drive or to loft, they’re not quite short enough to play the genuine pull and hook shot.
“Ultimately, I just try and do what I’m good at. I think a lot of people maybe get sucked into doing what they feel they should do, as opposed to what gives them the best chance.
“T20 cricket is all about good execution – one on one, the batter versus the bowler, who’s going to win. And if I attempt to bowl six yorkers out of six, I know I’m probably not going to execute all six. And if I miss them, they’re probably the highest-risk delivery.”
Mills has needed such single-mindedness and selfbelief throughout his career. In 2015, aged 22, he had a congenital back condition diagnosed. To protect his back, he quit playing anything longer than T20, but his progress was still marred by injuries.
In the winter of 2019-20, he suffered a stress fracture in his back, then got another in the same place late last year. From December to February in lockdown,
Mills had to wear a custom-made back brace all the time, apart from when sleeping and showering.
“It wasn’t much fun. It was wearing it all day every day,” he recalls. “I’d bike in the evening at home, and that was all I could do for three months in the middle of lockdown. It was a struggle – it was boring, monotonous, but it was just one of those things, unfortunately, I’ve become accustomed to.” Happily, this summer, Mills has been pain-free bowling.
Mills played four T20 internationals for England from 2016-17, but injuries and a loss of form after his sole IPL campaign in 2017 meant he slipped out of the squad. Yet he never slipped out of England’s thoughts; earlier this summer, T20 captain Eoin Morgan name-checked Mills as a player who could use the Hundred to force his way into the World Cup squad. Outstanding performances at the death for the tournament winners, Southern Brave, helped him do exactly that.
While Mills has fine raw attributes as a T20 quick bowler, he has also paid growing heed to data in recent years. He cites his plans for Sam Billings – whom he did not bowl to when they faced each other in the Hundred but will play in the second semi-final for Sussex against Kent at Finals Day today – as one example.
“The analyst brought up a wagon wheel of Sam Billings and showed he didn’t hit any boundaries behind square on the off side at all,” he said. “So, you could have third man up in the ring for him, and maybe have an extra man out elsewhere, so that’s good to know.”
The microscopic analysis on the T20 circuit demands evolution. So, while Mills is renowned for his original approach, he has also brought in a more traditional trait this year, bowling yorkers more regularly than in the past.
“I’ve bowled a lot more of them – so I’m really satisfied with that work
I’ve been doing in training, and it’s actually paid off.”
Yet even for a master of bowling at the death, the essential brutality of bowling at the end of the innings always remains. “You have to manage your expectations. It’s a volatile time of the game – you need to understand that you’re going to get hit for four, you’re going to get hit for six. It’s going to happen,” he says.
But Mills’s equanimity gives him the best chance of coming through those moments. “You can always take a wicket the next ball – and that can win a game,” he says. “I just back myself to come out on top.”