In the latest episode of Wisden and CricViz‘s The Greatest T20 podcast, Freddie Wilde, the CricViz analyst, highlighted why Tymal Mills should be in England’s upcoming T20 World Cup plans.
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“You talk about when you’re on the park, you think you’re good enough to get in the side and the numbers certainly back that up,” Wilde said. “You’ve just got the best economy rate [in the death overs] since the last World Cup, amongst guys who have bowled a decent number of balls. No one in the world is better than you, your economy rate is 7.35.
“You’re ahead of Rashid Khan, Sunil Narine, Wahab Riaz, Jasprit Bumrah, Mustafizur Rahman, Jofra Archer – that’s some good names to be ahead of. We’ll talk about particularly death bowling’ – something you really stand out at and the numbers concur, when you’re out in the park, you’re mixing with the very best.”
Mills rose to prominence during the three-match T20I series against India in January 2017 where he picked three wickets, but he hasn’t represented England in the shortest format of the sport since.
He was hopeful his excellence in the crunch moments of a T20 match gets him a place in the England side. “It’s [the statistics] nice to hear,” he said. “I saw that tweet flying around, my agent sent it to me, and so I made sure he got a copy of that and sends it to every coach before every draft I end up in the coming months.
“Look, I enjoy death bowling, it’s something I’ve been good at. I probably go about it a different way to a lot of people. You guys at CricViz will have all the details. A lot of guys will think, ‘OK I’ve got to go yorkers here’, a lot of guys will have different ways of going about it. I tend to just try and bowl fast and back of the length, really, and guys struggle to hit it more often than not, especially when you can mix it up with change of pace, and change up your line and your length as well.
“I really enjoy death bowling. As an out and out bowler, I’m not offering the team much with the bat and almost not much in the field. I’ve got to really step up in those times, I’ve got to bowl Powerplay and death overs. I don’t want to be one of those guys that just bowls in the middle overs, gets those easy kind of seven-to-12 overs, unless there’s a big partnership going. That’s not why I’m in the side.
“You’ve got to try at the death, give it a good crack, and see how it goes.”
