John Stern spoke to the new England men’s head coach Chris Silverwood about his African adventures, his coaching philosophy and daring to dream in issue two of Wisden Cricket Monthly back in December 2017.
This piece was first published in issue two of Wisden Cricket Monthly. Subscribe here.
“I like dreaming,” says England’s new fast-bowling coach. Chris Silverwood was 17 when he went to the 1992 New Year’s Test at Newlands in Cape Town. He was gripped, watching his idol Allan Donald charge in against India. “I said to the guy next to me, ‘I’m going to play here one day and bowl faster than him’. He just looked at me and said: ‘Nah, never.’” Eight years later this burly Yorkshire paceman was back, playing the fourth of his six Tests on the first tour for England’s new captain-coach combo of Nasser Hussain and Duncan Fletcher.
“There I was in the Millennium Test, got a five-for and bowled faster than Donald. I remember looking across to where I’d been standing when I said that, in the Oaks, and thinking, ‘Jeez, I’ve done it’. My line to any kid is dream and dream big. You have to have the courage to chase it but the only person that’s going to stop you is yourself.” As head coach of Essex these past two seasons, Silverwood, 42, has helped make plenty of dreams come true. A long-awaited promotion to Division One of the County Championship in 2016 was followed by an improbable title this summer, the county’s first since 1992.
Chris Silverwood says he draws on his own playing experiences but “you’ve got to be careful not to make your experiences theirs because they might not see the world as you see it. I always start by asking questions”. One question he has asked of himself – which would have been pertinent for England’s seamers in the Ashes – is whether he bowled too short early in his career. “When my pace started dropping in my 30s I pitched it up more and I got a lot more wickets. When you’re running in trying to bowl as fast as you can, you might just be a fraction short. Get it a bit fuller and it’s the difference between a nick and a play-and-miss. How many more wickets could I have had?” He will never know and it doesn’t sound like he lies awake at night fretting about it. He’s dreaming other bowlers’ dreams now.
