England bowler Mark Wood was so crushed by first Test loss, he considered driving from Perth to Brisbane

3 months ago 18

England talisman Mark Wood has described how the visitors were shell shocked by Travis Head’s Perth onslaught, lamenting how the first Ashes Test slipped from their grasp almost in the blink of an eye.

The paceman was still coming to terms with the two-day Test loss when he fronted former teammate Stuart Broad’s For The Love of Cricket podcast, admitting the result had flattened him and his teammates, many of whom who spent Sunday bunkered in their hotel rooms.

Mark Wood bowling on the second, and final, day of the Perth Test.

“It didn’t matter what we did; he [Head] just smacked everything,” Wood said with an exasperated tone.

“I know he’s a good player, and we all respect how good he is, but that was something else.

“We bowled, what, like 30 overs? And it felt like it was over in 10 minutes … the game was almost like in fast-forward mode.”

The Perth match ranked as one of the shortest completed Test matches in history, finishing inside two days and after just 847 balls had been bowled.

Wood told Broad he seriously contemplated using the additional time now at his disposal to drive from Perth to Brisbane – where the second Test starts on December 4 – to take his mind off the loss. But he said he was advised against it, considering the reality of how long that drive would take.

He admitted Australia’s decision to throw Head to the top of the order in the second innings, when Usman Khawaja was again hobbled by back spasms, blindsided England’s bowlers. They had expected Marnus Labuschagne to step into Khawaja’s spot, as happened in the first innings.

He described how Head toyed with the England attack by continually hitting the ball into gaps and forcing captain Ben Stokes to shuffle his fielders.

“When he first came out, I didn’t expect him to be so gung-ho ... I expected it [the ball] to nip around, I expected it to be difficult, especially going off the first innings,” Wood said.

“It got to the point where we desperately needed him out or the game is gone.”

Wood said he and his fellow bowlers tried a variety of tactics to stem the flow of runs from Head’s bat, including mixing their pace and bowling wide of the stumps with a “shark-net” field.

Wood, who’ll turn 36 days after the fifth Test in Sydney, went wicketless in Perth.

With his searing pace and boundless energy and humour, he is a barometer of the England team. But even he admitted the result had been a bitter pill to swallow.

The consolation, he told Broad, was that England had got themselves into a winnable position in the game, and had shown they could compete with Australia.

“It’s going to hurt, and it’s going to hurt for a few days,” he said.

“There’s nothing I can say on a podcast or to the people here that is going to make this sound any better.

“[But] this is one of five [Tests]. We’ve been hit pretty hard in round one, but we’ve got other rounds to try to throw some back.”

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