44 LISTENER SEPTEMBER 7 2019
THIS LIFE
G
ET
TY
IM
AG
ES
The fast and
the spurious
England’s new pace-
bowling star has cricket
commentators reaching
for superlatives and
struggling with amnesia.
by Paul Thomas
SPORT
Mitchell Johnson, left,
and Pat Cumminsfamously England’s Harold Larwood
in the 1932/33 “Bodyline” series.
One also thinks of England’s Frank
“Typhoon” Tyson in 1954/55 and
John Snow in 1970/71. On the Aus-
tralian side there were Ray Lindwall
and Keith Miller in 1948, Dennis
Lillee and Jeff Thomson in 1974/75
and Mitchell Johnson in 2013/14.
Indeed, Johnson’s exploits seem to
have already faded from the collec-
tive consciousness. For the record, he
took 37 wickets at an average of 13.9
and was a huge factor in Australia’s
5-0 home Ashes series win. He set the
tone in the first test at the Gabba in
Brisbane, tormenting England’s hith-
erto highly productive Jonathan Trott
to the extent of effectively ending
his international career and inducing
bowel-quaking terror in the visitors’
dressing room.the entire outlook of fast bowling in
the modern era,” said commentator
Michael Holding. This was particularly
extravagant coming from a former fast
bowler who was known as “Whisper-
ing Death”, because of his gliding
approach to the wicket and extreme
pace, and belonged to a golden gen-
eration of West Indian fast bowlers.
Archer was born in Barbados. For most
of the 1980s and 1990s, Barbados
(2018 population 287,564)
would have had a half-
dozen quicks capable
of bowling as fast and
threateningly as he
did at Lord’s.
Ashes history is stud-
ded with examples of
fast bowlers demoralis-
ing opposition batting
line-ups, perhaps mostC
ricket has been around for a fair while:
in 1611, when it was essentially a chil-
dren’s game, two men in Sussex were
prosecuted for playing it on a Sunday,
instead of going to church. (Early 17th-
century Sussex sounds rather like the
boarding school I attended.)
But the assumption that there’s nothing new
under the cricketing sun has been emphatically
dispelled in the current Ashes series. England test
debutant Jofra Archer has unveiled an entirely new
way of delivering the ball – they’re calling it “fast
bowling” – that pundits predict will revolutionise
the grand old game.
Judging from the reaction of some to Archer’s
fiery spell in Australia’s second innings of the
second test at Lord’s – he felled run machine Steve
Smith in a manner chillingly reminiscent of the
death-by-bouncer of Australian batsman Phillip
Hughes in 2014 – you’d swear it was the first time
anyone has bowled at 150km/h and hit a batsman
on the head with a short-pitched delivery.
“It now feels as if, in Jofra Archer, [England cap-
tain Joe] Root has found his
match winner in all condi-
tions,” declared former
England skipper Michael
Vaughan, ignoring the
inconvenient detail that
Archer didn’t actually
bowl his team to victory.
“This man will change