Whenever a new English fast bowling talent bursts onto the scene, eyes naturally flick towards the speed gun for a glimpse of that magic 90, yet Mitchell Stanley maintains a policy of looking away.
‘I’ve had conversations with bowling coaches when I have been with England Lions where I have just said, “If you’re going to use a pocket radar or anything with speeds, I don’t really want to see it, especially during a training session”,’ Lancashire’s Stanley tells Daily Mail Sport.
‘Because sometimes it can take away what you’re trying to do and actually you end up just focusing on your speed, and trying to go faster and faster actually means you end up bowling slower and slower.
‘Obviously, the adrenaline when you’re actually playing a game means your speed will go up naturally, so I tend to just worry more about what I’m doing with the ball and the outcome.’
For the record, the 6ft 5in Stanley broke the 90mph barrier on multiple occasions at the start of the Ashes tour last winter when for three weeks England’s next best players shadowed Ben Stokes’ Test team.
According to England’s all-time leading wicket taker Jimmy Anderson, his county captain, Stanley’s ‘easy pace’ is one of ‘many attributes that will hold him in good stead for the next level’. The others including ‘a lovely, rhythmical action and ability to swing the ball.’
Anderson realised he had a bowler on his hands with the potential to follow him onto the international scene last September when in only his second County Championship appearance, Stanley claimed match figures of 11 for 180 against Kent at Canterbury.
Following a catalogue of injury spanning a decade, he finally had confidence in his body to get through four-day matches and did so with spectacular results, something for which the science and medicine team at Emirates Old Trafford should take a lot of credit.
Annual lumbar stress fractures had held him back until that point, but in Anderson – who spent a huge chunk of the 2006 season in a back brace – he has an empathetic presence in his corner.
Now 25, Stanley has benefitted from Lancashire’s patience and understanding. He first had tongues wagging around county cricket’s coaching community when he burst onto the scene with Worcestershire in 2022, earning a Hundred contract with Manchester Originals after hurrying England openers Jos Buttler and Phil Salt in a Vitality Blast match at New Road.
‘I had no idea how quickly I bowled. I always thought I was low 80s, and then there was that game against Lancashire. After we’d finished the game, the analyst came up to me and said: “Do you know how quick you were today?” I was like: “No.” And it was 91-92 miles per hour.’
However, Worcestershire took a financial decision to release one of the country’s rawest but most exciting talents when a freak accident restricted him to just one Twenty20 appearance in 2023.
Stanley takes up the story of a shoulder dislocation against Northamptonshire, saying: ‘We batted first and I came back for two on the last ball of our innings, diving to get in – a pointless dive because I was already out by miles.
‘My shoulder pops out on impact with the ground, but I didn’t really know it had happened because it went straight back in and I even bowled in the second innings of the match. It was only when I woke up that night that I realised that I couldn’t move it.’
It added to a cycle of injury and rehabilitation that began at 15 when, shortly after impressing then Worcestershire academy director Elliott Wilson at the Bunbury Festival, he suffered his first back issues – triggered, he believes, by a rapid growth spurt. ‘I went from the shortest in my class when I was 15 to the tallest when I was 16,’ he says.
Over four years a regular pattern emerged. He would play for two months and sit out for six as the stress fractures turned up like clockwork, and each time he returned feeling under pressure ‘to prove myself because I’d only have a short period of time, but getting straight out the blocks, bowling as fast as I could, instead of building up, kept ending with the same result’.
Stanley grew up in a non-cricket family in Shropshire, but was converted at 11 when one of his Sunday football team-mates encouraged him to attend a summer camp at the local club Shifnal, run by his parents. Suddenly, summers were crammed with carefree days re-enacting the exploits of Anderson and another Lancastrian, Andrew Flintoff: ‘a childhood hero.’
So, it’s a neat link that those two men are now influential in preparing Stanley himself for the Test stage – England Lions coach Flintoff backing his case for an ECB fast bowling development contract last summer.
At that juncture, he had only one first-class wicket to his name. But Lancashire have treated him with kid gloves – he was rested for this week’s match against Gloucestershire, before a back spasm prevented him replacing the injured Ajeet Singh Dale on the first morning – and Stanley has confidence of achieving his ambitions.
‘I always watched it, always loved it. I’d go down to the nets as a kid and mimic Test matches, and that’s always been my dream. I really missed not being able to play through my late teens into early 20s, so actually being involved in first-class cricket has been like a big lease of life,’ he says.
‘Don’t get me wrong, I love white-ball cricket as well, but red-ball is the purest form. Injuries pigeonholed me as a limited-overs bowler because that’s all my body’s been able to cope with previously, but I prefer the longer-form skills. Swinging the ball more, playing with your fields, having catchers in.’
No mention of speed, though. That will be for others to clock.
