“Is he [Suryakumar Yadav] chilled out?” The fastest bowler at T20 World Cup Mark Wood quizzes his England team-mate Tymal Mills, who also happens to be Surya’s IPL team-mate at Mumbai Indians. Mills answers in the affirmative. “Oh no!,” jests Wood. “Nothing fazes him?” ‘Nope’. “Not even fast bowling?” Mills answers in the negative. And both laugh.
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They are in the middle of a podcast they host for BBC: ‘Good Pace for Radio.” Sam Curran was the guest and once his stint ended, Wood and Mills picked their best batsman, bowler, and moment of the T20 world cup.
Interestingly, for Wood two of the answers are about India. He picks Suryakumar as the best batsman, and adds, “Kohli too is going pretty well”. He picked South Africa’s Anrich Nortje as the best bowler. And the best moment? “You [Mills], me, and Chris Woakes sitting at a pub in Melbourne watching India beat Pakistan. Fantastic game. Back and forth …”
🎶 Curran Curran Curran Curran Curran chameleon 🎶
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Episode 5 of Good Pace for Radio is out now! @tmills15 and @MAWood33 are joined by @CurranSM.
Get the inside track ahead of England’s semi-final against India…
Listen on @BBCSounds. #T20WorldCup #BBCCricket pic.twitter.com/hnukNEmyQW
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— Test Match Special (@bbctms) November 7, 2022
Suryakumar has earned that respect. Mills oozes it. “Surya is a lovely man, very friendly, always smiling and our best batter in the whole competition. We played a T20 series and he scored a hundred at Trent Bridge. The boys still speak about it. Some memorable shots.”
Wood seems to agree, and then asks, “Is he batting with a big wide bat? Maybe we can have it checked [before the semi-final]?” Mills laughs and negates that as well.
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Why does Stokes run from deep square-leg to sweeper cover?
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We have seen during England games, fielders criss-crossing from one end all the way to the opposite end even on big Australian grounds at the end of each delivery, if need be. Someone like Ben Stokes was doing sweeper cover to deep square-leg. Wood explained the rationale.
“We had specific kind of fielding positions: for each bowler, we will have a specialist fielder at each area. For me [Alex] Hales is the third man as he is a tall man. Sam [Curran] too was going from side to side,” Wood said about bespoke fielding.
Mills too chipped in with a detail about Stokes. “Stokesy was literally doing deep square to deep cover between each ball. He had to run the width of Gabba each ball. You do want your best fielder at the right positions.”
Sam Curran on IPL experience
When Sam Curran was on the show, Mills would ask him about the semi-final against India, especially considering Curran’s experience of playing against some of the players in the IPL.
“I am not massive in looking at videos, stats. But when you come against Indian players, and you have done well against them, you take a bit of confidence. You know in their mind there might be a bit of vulnerability with what you come with. But with technology and so much film going around these days, they know what you are going to do. You have to come up with different plans. You do take massive confidence from IPL – the crowds, grounds, and quality of cricket is amazing.
“Kohli, Yadav, Rohit, these kinds of players are world class. Let’s hope Thursday is not their night. You know some of the players personally. We know how good they are. They are an incredibly dangerous team. But if we play good on our day, we will be fine. It’s my fist World Cup semi-final, when I wake up on Thursday it will be a bit of a feeling “wow,” Sam Curran says. “It didn’t feel like the World Cup last week with all the rain. Then that annoying loss to Ireland. Then when we defeated New Zealand, it began to kick in. We had to win that game and now with World Cup semi-final against India it would be like an away game with a full house! We know how well India are supported around the world. It gives an extra bit of buzz.”
Wood would agree with that assessment about India.
“They [India] have been playing a bit better than us. I am excited. Before the tournament everyone was saying Australia or India are favourites. If you want to win the tournament you want to beat the big teams. We are confident, we can’t shy away. We trust each other, have match winners throughout.. I feel we can get the job done,” Wood says.
In the end, the team-mates couldn’t agree on only one thing: about a listener’s question on Baguette or Naan-bread- which would fly farthest?
Wood picked the Baguette “thrown as a javelin”. Mills sided with “Naan-bread thrown like a frisbee. If it’s a heavy naan, like a keema naan, it would go.” Wood didn’t concur. “Naan would be too gooey, too grubby. Baguette would.”
One thing, though, in the above debate. At this World cup, the fastest thing flying has been the white ball when hurled by Wood.
