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“My dad would be Australia and I’d be England,” Mark Wood says with a wry smile when remembering his first Ashes Tests as a boy in his back garden in Ashington, Northumberland. “I’d try to copy Darren Gough, Andrew Caddick, Matthew Hoggard and, later, Jimmy Anderson, who I’d go on and play with. My dad, who didn’t do the actions so well, had to be Glenn McGrath, Jason Gillespie and Shane Warne. He was most proud of his Gillespie but his Warne wasn’t great.”
Wood snorts at the idea that his dad, Derek, might have let him win most of those matches. “No, no, no. It was proper cricket. You had to give each other lbw and every time I hit my dad in the leg he’d be going: ‘No, that’s going over’ or ‘That’s down the leg side.’ I was like: ‘Dad, that was plumb.’ I had to get my DRS right.”
He laughs before pointing out that his dad had been a decent batsman who played a high level of club cricket. “Back in the day they played against some pretty good professionals. He still talks about facing Courtney Walsh and Ian Bishop. In the garden, we’d bowl to each other from 16 yards away with these little Incrediballs. We did that for years until, when I was 14, I bounced my dad and hit him on the head. At that point he thought: ‘This is a bit much …’”
That mention of Wood’s extreme pace is a timely reminder that we are less than three weeks from an intriguing Ashes series. The first Test, in Perth, begins on 21 November and England plan to bombard Australia with a bowling attack full of bounce, hostility and raw speed.
Wood’s respect and admiration for Australia is obvious. From those fiercely contested Ashes series with his father to playing club cricket on the Gold Coast to his dramatic involvement in 11 Tests against the real thing, taking 41 wickets, Wood defines himself against the old enemy. He took the wicket that sealed England’s series victory in 2015 and bagged 17 wickets in four Tests in 2021-22 where Wood’s searing bowling, including a career-best six for 37, was a rare highlight in a 4-0 drubbing. In 2023 he helped England win two of the last three Tests as he sparked a dramatic revival which resulted in the home series being drawn 2-2.
But there is a poignant undertow because, turning 36 three days after the fifth Test is due to end on 8 January, Woods’s fourth Ashes might be his last. His career has been blighted by injury – and his latest rehabilitation has been testing because he has not played since February.
“I’ve obviously had a poor and strange summer,” he admits of his struggle to recover fully from knee surgery in March. “I could have played at the back end of the season, for Durham, but England took a more cautious approach.”
Wood explains that “Chris Woakes was completely different. He wanted games under his belt to feel the rhythm whereas I can get up to speed very fast.”
Rather than making any brash predictions of a certain England victory, Wood says: “I can truly say there’s a quiet confidence within the group. It’s a different feel this time. Last time we had Covid and problems behind the scenes. Under this coach [Brendon McCullum] and this captain [Ben Stokes] there’s a specific way of playing and we’re going with more confidence and belief.”
Wood is at the Oval with a small group of his England teammates. Joe Root, Jamie Smith, Brydon Carse and Wood are ambassadors for New Balance and they’re all in a relaxed mood. Wood has worked with the company for more than 10 years and his loyalty to is matched by his humour as England’s resident prankster. But the seriousness of the coming weeks cannot be escaped, and thinking of Root, who captained England during the last Ashes in Australia, Wood says: “Everybody talks about Joe not having got a hundred in Australia but that doesn’t take away how great a player he is. I believe in Joe 100% and he’ll deliver for us like he has numerous times when we’ve been under the pump. I just hope that, when he comes in, we’re not 15 for two.”
The ferocity and fragility of England’s bowlers, however, might decide the series. “It’s about having a collection of bowlers who can come in if anyone needs resting or there are injuries,” Wood says of a squad crammed with quick bowlers including Jofra Archer, Gus Atkinson, Josh Tongue, Matthew Potts and Carse. “We want a battery of fast bowlers and we’ve tried to change from the norm of England, where there are lots of seamers, to Australia’s vision of fast bowling. Look at Pat Cummins, Mitchell Starc and Josh Hazlewood: they can all bowl at 90[mph] or in the high 80s and they’ve been especially consistent and relentless. So we’re going there with a bit of an Australia blueprint to see if we can replicate that and put their batters under pressure like they’ve done with ours.”
Archer, England’s other seriously rapid and intimidating quick, has also suffered for years with injuries but Wood says: “He’s ready to go. All the bowlers are ready to go. Atkinson has had a fantastic year and Tongue seems to be getting better with every game he plays for England. I know Carse really well, from Durham, and he will have a huge impact in games, not just with bowling fast but with the bat as well.”
Stokes overcame his own injury woes to return as a frontline bowler in the summer series against India. But he missed the final Test with a grade-three tear of a shoulder muscle. “He’s in fantastic physical shape,” Wood says of his captain. “He’s worked really hard in the past year with the injuries and there’s a real good atmosphere around Stokesy. Once we’re in Australia he’ll not want to take a backward step, because that’s who he is as a character and a player.”
Stokes and McCullum also understand Wood. Sometimes, when throwing the ball to Wood, Stokes will offer a few simple words like: “Make something happen, Woody.”
“I don’t think he would do that with everybody,” Wood concedes. “He knows how to get the best out of me by just keeping it fun and with a simple gameplan.”
Similarly, with England 2-0 down in the 2023 Ashes, McCullum sidled up to the returning Wood before the Headingley Test. “Baz just said: ‘Are you ready to bowl some rockets, boss?”
Wood responded with five for 34 on the opening day. Every ball of his first four overs exceeded 90mph and, at his quickest, he hit 96.5mph. “That’s Baz,” Wood confirms. “Keep it simple and enjoy it. Sometimes I’ll say I’m not pleased with how I bowled and he’ll pick out a specific ball and say: ‘How fast was that?’ or ‘Can you imagine what they’re thinking next door when they saw that?’ He’ll always find a positive.”
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There’s also a positive spin in Wood’s reaction to the public barbs that England will experience in Australia. “Last time I quite enjoyed it,” he says. “It was good craic back and forth. Some lads, and I’ll not name names, struggled with the hostility. I tried to have fun with it and my time on the Gold Coast helped because I could relate to that.”
He played two seasons of club cricket in Australia for Palm Beach Currumbin. “Sounds tough, Palm Beach, doesn’t it?” Wood says. “I wouldn’t say I did amazingly well but it helped me grow up. I went out at 19 and back again when I was 21. I found lots of similarities in the lads that played there and my cricket friends at Ashington. I’ve still got six or seven friends from there that made the big journey over to my wedding. They’re fantastic people.”
Wood, amusingly, remembers one of his Gold Coast mishaps. “I was living with another English guy and we stayed with the captain’s mother. She worked night shifts so we never really saw her. We’d try and do chores for her but I nearly cut my toe off trying to cut the grass. The strimmer took the skin off the top of my toe and I couldn’t play cricket that weekend. I made sure it was the other lad’s chore after that.”
There are sombre memories when Wood recalls his darkest period. In 2016 a string of injuries led to a panic attack at an airport. “When I look back, all the signs were there that I was struggling with anxiety,” he says. “Would I be the same bowler? If I was in that position now I’d handle it differently by working with people and knowing what it was. But it was very scary because I didn’t know what was happening. I was going to see a surgeon in Holland for a second opinion on why my ankle kept breaking down. Little things added to [the panic attack]. I was going to an airport I’d never been to before and driving at four in the morning. When I got to the airport I was shaking and in a really bad place. The physio got me there but it was a tough day.”
Did Wood came close to giving up on cricket? “Yes, with that ankle, I definitely thought: ‘Can I continue?”
Wood has come though fraught times with his trademark humour and zany stunts. He has been known to startle his teammates by barking like a dog. His impression is so convincing that, until they see Wood laughing, some players have been convinced that a stray pooch has sneaked into the dressing room. Could the dog be brought out during the Ashes?
“I don’t plan it but sometimes it comes out. I’ve been on England tours where it’s not been as strong as it could be but this group has a real togetherness. You have to gauge the feeling in the room. If the atmosphere is a bit sombre, or people are angry, I’m not sure barking like a dog would go down particularly well.”
He smiles at a reminder that he used to ride an imaginary horse in the outfield. “The horse has gone now,” he says. “I’m going through the animals and by the time I finish, I might have a farmyard. I’m just trying to be a little daft and create a relaxed atmosphere.”
Wood clearly loves playing so could he continue in Test cricket for a few more years? “As long as I feel I’m contributing, and my body’s good, I’d love to keep going.”
When I ask Wood what he expects to be doing 10 years from now he smiles again: “Playing at Ashington [Cricket Club] with my boy, probably. That would be a great thing.”
Before then there are Ashes series to play in the back yard with his son, Harry, who is six now. “My dad had a lovely blend of playing tough in the back garden but also encouraging me,” Wood recalls. “I’ll be the same with my son.”
But first comes the small matter of facing Australia for real in the coming weeks. Wood leans forward and says, intently: “I can’t wait. I’m ready.”
