• Home
  • Cricket News
  • Mark Wood Expects Fire From Returning Tymal Mills Eager To Forge Archer Like Partnership With Him

Mark Wood expects 'fire' from returning Tymal Mills, eager to forge Archer-like partnership with him

England pacer Mark Wood is building high hopes on partnership with the left-arm seamer Tymal Mills, who is returning to the international stage in England colours after a long gap of four years.

Mills has been included in the England squad for the T20 World Cup and Wood expects him to bring some “fire” in order to not allow the skipper Eoin Morgan to miss Jofra Archer.

He is looking forward to forging a deadly combination with Mills, something on the line of what he developed with Archer when England had emerged as the champions of the ICC ODI World Cup in 2019.

"We're all competing for places here because there's only a certain amount of seamers that can play, but I don't feel like me and 'T' are in direct competition. We're all part of a squad here that's trying to win the World Cup, so we'll all be desperately trying to do that,” Wood said from Oman where England are staying before starting their campaign against the defending champions West Indies.

"It worked for me and Jofra, so me and T might have to keep it going," Wood said. "He's looked sharp in the nets, and to watch him, I certainly wouldn't want to face him. He's looking the business at the minute so hopefully, he can bring some fire and I'll have to up my game as well."

However, Wood was not ignorant of the challenges that England and the pace attack will be dealing with on different sets of grounds and pitches to be used in the tournament. He pointed out the different set of playing conditions at the grounds in the UAE and Oman and underlined the supporting role to the spinners he and his fellow pacers will have to fulfil in the tournament.

He also highlighted the amount of preparation and ideas his teammates would have had playing on similar pitches in the Indian Premier League which could be beneficial for their success in the tournament.

"(Conditions in UAE) put extra pressure on us to deliver, so we'll have to be up for the challenge," Wood said. "We do keep an eye on the pitches there, and it's not just the wickets, it's the dimensions - the field in Sharjah is quite small, Abu Dhabi is obviously wide. But it's good that we get a heads-up [through the IPL].

"My contribution might not just be in the wickets column. If it is a spinner's track, my role might be to keep it down as much as I can and then the spinners can attack from the other end. The thing you have to do is adapt within the game anyway."

Wood will have to step up with the pace and accuracy as England are without the star duo of Archer and Ben Stokes. They have a potent attack to challenge teams in the conditions of the UAE and Oman and most certainly, Wood will have to rise to the occasion with a big heart and consistent performances.

Discover more
Top Stories
news

KKR Coach Brendon McCullum pins blame of batting collapses on Eoin Morgan-led middle order

The Kolkata Knight Riders were sailing through till in halfway mark in the pursuit of 193 runs to win their third IPL title against the Chennai Super Kings till they started to implode once again. The opening pair of Venkatesh Iyer and Shubman Gill had put up a commanding partnership of 91 runs inside 11 overs but the Knight Riders lipped quickly to 108/4 in the span of 16 balls to lose their grip on the momentum and subsequently lost the game by 27 runs. They had a similar horrible batting collapse in the second qualifier against the Delhi Capitals when they had dragged a seamless chase of 13 runs from the last 24 balls to a dire situation where Rahul Tripathi had to hit a six on the penultimate ball to win them the game. Eoin Morgan had assured dissection of the collapse in the final four overs against the Capitals but little did it do their fortune as the skipper himself was the weakest link of the batting unit. It was being narrated that the dominance by the top order batsmen and spin bowlers on spin-friendly pitches in Sharjah led to their arrival while the middle order was plaguing their growth. The coach Brendon McCullum agreed with the “fair assessment” and said that the middle order comprising of the skipper Morgan, Dinesh Karthik would be the first one to admit their failures in the competition. He said that the middle-order could not bring impact to the table and hence the Knight Riders were always without all bases covered which were exposed on the night of the final. "Yeah I think that's a fair assessment," McCullum said when he was asked about the role of middle-order in KKR’s struggle this season. "I think our bowling group did a really good job. We fielded well, and our top-order batting was superb. But unfortunately, we weren't quite able to get the real impact through our middle-order players… You know there's a lot of experience there, they're the first ones to admit they didn't have the greatest of tournaments. That can happen at times, it wasn't for a lack of trying, that's for sure. The guys certainly invested, they put the work in, it just wasn't necessarily their tournament. That was just unfortunate, that it kind of happened amongst all of the middle order. But that can happen sometimes.” However, he was not too unsatisfied with the overall situation and chose to see the positives out of a remarkable comeback by the team after their horrible first phase of the tournament.

news

Coach Brendon McCullum heaps praise on Indian top-order batsmen for scripting KKR's turnaround

The Kolkata Knight Riders were almost down and out of the 14th edition of the Indian Premier League before the Covid-19 crisis in their camp and subsequent outbreak in other camps led to the postponement of the tournament midway through. They had won only two games out of the seven played till that point before the break “came at a really good time” for them. Their coach Brendon McCullum conceded that they were pushed against the wall before the break which allowed them some time to figure out the best way to go forward and “smooth out a couple of rough edges”. "The break probably came at a really good time for us to be honest," McCullum said at the post-match press conference. "It can be hard in a tournament such as the IPL to be able to keep your composure when results are going against you. Where we sat after seven games, with only two wins, it was pretty disappointing. So the break came at a good time. During that time, we had some conversations right throughout the few months in between with some guys and just tried to smooth out a couple of rough edges. At the start of the second leg of the tournament in the UAE, the Knight Riders need a bit of luck and a lot of sparks, especially from the batting unit to turn things around. The spark came in the form of a dominating top order that lit up the stage with the emergence of players such as Venkatesh Iyer and established players at the IPL level coming back to their best. The opening pair of Shubman Gill and Iyer put the bowling attack of opposition under enormous pressure and the coach McCullum made reservations about the fact that it led to their turnaround in the second phase of the tournament. He commenced the quartet of Iyer, Gill, Nitish Rana and Rahul Tripathi for batting with all their guts and conceded his loss of words in their appreciation. "I always felt that our intent needed to increase to be able to put pressure back on the opposition. I cannot talk highly enough of our top four Indian batters in particular for what they were able to achieve in the second half of the competition. It takes guts to play the way that they did and it takes courage to change the method and to trust the method that us as coaches were asking them to play, which was a more up-tempo game. But they were absolutely fantastic, and were such a massive reason why we were a huge chance in this competition, why we made it as well as what we had. So we've certainly got something to work with there, moving forward,” McCulumm conceded. The Knight Riders suffered their first defeat in an IPL final after winning the first two games on the big stage. Their unbeatne record in the IPL final was tarnished by the Chennai Super Kings who were a better and more clinical side than them on the night of the final and throughout the tournament.