England have made no secret of their desire to add pace to their bowling attack – but the mission runs rather deeper than just selection for the Test team.

“I have spent hours in the garden with my 10-year-old practising bowling,” says Ed Barney, who replaced Mo Bobat as England’s performance director this year.

“Before being involved in this project, he would spray it down the leg side and I’d tell him to slow down and bowl straighter, with more control. This work has led me to question that. Bowl as fast as you can, and be less concerned about control. We can work on that later, once the pace is there.”

However far Barney Jr goes in the game, the example is indicative of a wider shift in attitude at the England and Wales Cricket Board towards pace across all formats of the game.

Certainly it chimes with England’s managing director Rob Key’s pre-season message to county bowlers in an interview with Telegraph Sport in March: “I don’t care how many wickets you take. I want to know how hard you are running in, how hard you are hitting the pitch and are you able to sustain pace at 85-88mph.”

They have been as good as their word, picking quicker, point-of-difference bowlers, such as Gus Atkinson and Olly Stone, culminating in the selection for the final Test of the summer of Josh Hull, a 20-year-old left-arm quick who had two wickets at an average of 182.5 in Division Two of the County Championship for Leicestershire. Hull will join Andrew Flintoff’s Lions in South Africa next month; almost all the 10 young seamers selected are pacy.

James Anderson was forced into retirement while Stuart Broad did so voluntarily, Ollie Robinson has been discarded, Craig Overton cannot get a look-in, while outstanding but more modestly paced county bowlers such as Sam Cook continue to be overlooked.

This year, Barney and Key have been heavily involved in what is known internally as the ECB’s “pace project”, which is guided by the requirements at men’s international level but, in practice, is more focused on developing much younger bowlers, and changing attitudes towards bowling in England.

“Historically, we would value control, but what we are trying to say is that we really value pace and exciting, dynamic fast bowling,” Barney says. “Then we want those initial skills of variability, swing, seam, and accuracy to come. It’s reversing the approach, in many ways.

“In a British mentality, do we value pace, excitement, and all those things? Or do we place too much emphasis on control, accuracy? Part of it is proactive. Part of what we are trying to do is shift that narrative and mentality. How do we get faster, even just by adding 1mph? How do we celebrate fast bowling?”

Well, why the need to celebrate fast bowling? Because it is so important to winning Tests. Research for the pace project, compiled ahead of this season and seen by Telegraph Sport, showed three things: England are a middling Test side, pace is important... and England lack it.

The stats

Evidence for the first point came with the fact that England have spent just 12 months (August 2011-12, when James Anderson and Stuart Broad were magnificent) at the top of the ICC Test rankings since they were introduced in 1981, compared to Australia’s 201 months. And since 2015, England are a middling Test side: their win-loss ratio at home in that period is 1.9, fifth best of all teams, and away it drops to 0.6, fourth best.

Globally, between 2015 and the start of this English summer, the quicker a pace bowler bowls, the more regularly they take wickets. Balls bowled at 79-81mph have a strike-rate of 63.7. Between 83 and 85mph, it drops to 52.4. Above 90mph, a wicket falls every 47.6 balls.

The same pattern is followed in most countries, such as Australia (with a strike-rate of 73.1 between 79-81mph, but 46.6 above 90), Pakistan (with a strike-rate of 85.7 between 79-81mph, but 32.7 above 90), and even England, where traditionally lateral movement has been considered the greatest weapon. In England, balls between 79-81mph have a strike-rate of 57.9; get up above 90mph and they have a strike-rate of 43.

For the first two years of the Bazball project, England had an average speed of 82mph, with just 3 per cent of all balls by seamers hitting that 90mph mark. In the 2010s, 28 per cent of their seamers’ deliveries were above 87mph. In the 2020s, that figure dropped to 19 per cent. Since 2022, England’s pace attack has had the best economy in the world (3.13), but only the fifth-best strike-rate (54.2).

While the best pace attacks in the world – Australia, India and South Africa in recent years – would routinely feature multiple bowlers averaging north of 85mph, England would rely on bowlers in the low 80mphs, then throw in Mark Wood as a point of difference – when fit.

A collaborative approach to putting on pace

“An important point I’d like to stress,” says David Court, who heads up player identification at the ECB, “is that we are not going away from wanting a varied attack. We still want different types of bowlers in the mix. We want control, lateral movement, bounce, and, therefore, a high release point, as well as pace.”

Nevertheless, says Court, “all of those attributes being done a bit quicker does help”. He points back to what he regards as England’s best pace attack, from 2004 through to the 2005 Ashes, when Steve Harmison, Matthew Hoggard, Simon Jones and Flintoff combined so beautifully. “Three were genuinely quick to go with their skill, with Hoggard actually being the point of difference as a controlled swing bowler,” he says. This is why Chris Woakes remains important in a post-Anderson world, and why selector Luke Wright has said a call-up for Cook remains possible.

“We always have to look at where our depth is and understand it in relation to what we need in the international game. What’s absolutely clear is that we will continue to need a volume of high-pace bowlers if we are to be successful at international level,” Court says.

So, England are looking to build pace into their youngest bowlers. While the County Championship – with its games week after week – makes bowling quickly for long periods difficult, there is a determination to work closely with counties to increase speeds. In the Championship, 80 per cent of balls from seamers are under 82mph. In Test cricket, 62 per cent are over 83mph. The games are played at different speeds.

“The relationship with counties is so important,” Barney says. “They do the lion’s share of work in developing players, so we are trying to help them out. When a player is identified as being of high potential, they will come to Loughborough and go through biomechanical profiling, giving us real insight into the individual bowler and their developmental areas and injury risks. We then work case by case to make a tailored plan together that the county will deliver, because they are in charge of the player’s development until they are selected by England.”

Barney adds that iHawk, the umpire-worn camera technology that has given them access to every ball in the County Championship has been a useful development.

The ‘pace blueprint’

There are, the ECB believes, seven ingredients to bowling faster: optimal run-up speed, a high front arm, heel strike, chest drive, a delayed bowling arm, a braced front leg and a flick of the wrist. It calls this the pace blueprint.

“The profile we get at Loughborough ranks each bowler in each of those areas against our historical data set,” Court says. “That data set is bowlers we’ve had in the lab over the last 15 or so years. That’s a large number of bowlers. We’ve identified the common traits of those that bowl 85mph-plus. Against each of those areas, they get a ranking. One bowler might do really well on five of them, but would benefit from working on another. It tells us which part of an action we might want to focus on.”

The biomechanical testing shows injury risks, especially regarding stress fractures, although predicting and preventing injury remains a very difficult task. More straightforward is ensuring that young fast bowlers are fuelled correctly in terms of nutrition, and spending the right amount of time in the gym, and resting.

“The most important thing about working with bowlers is remembering that there is no one-size-fits-all,” Barney says. “Everyone is unique and has different bodies, so it’s about understanding each one.”

Court chimes in: “Each bowler will have their own sweet spot when it comes to volume of bowling, time off. A big watch-out for us is when young bowlers are growing, as they are at a greater risk of injury as their body changes and it affects their limbs and coordination. We know that it’s good to take time off in the winter, but you can definitely take too long off, leading to bones softening and greater injury risks.”

Just as Barney encouraged his son, putting on speed through the pace blueprint is a young bowler’s first aim now, followed by developing skill (such as bounce, lateral movement or T20 variations), then accuracy as the final piece of the jigsaw.

A shift in mindset

Barney and Court are keen not to directly link what they are doing in the pathway with the changing face of England’s Test attack, but they do acknowledge that a shift in narrative from the top is helping change attitudes in the development system.

“That is inadvertently pushing things in a certain direction at junior level,” Barney says. “It is clear that English cricket values pace, and adding an extra couple of miles an hour to every bowler, as well as the continuous development of pace bowlers, is helpful.”

England’s attack is changing. Like Australia or England in the 2005 Ashes, it is more likely England will field multiple quicker men, Wood and Atkinson for example, alongside one steadier bowler such as Woakes. This has the advantage of not overworking the quickest bowlers as the only point of difference — as Jofra Archer possibly once was. In the squad for the Pakistan tour are Brydon Carse and Stone, while Matthew Potts has spoken about his desire to put on pace to keep up.

While they might be building an attractive, regenerated attack for next year’s big series against India and Australia, Barney and Court are thinking of the bigger picture. Barney even wonders if wides are too heavily punished in junior cricket, disincentivising pace.

“We don’t have all the answers,” Court says . “But we know being that bit quicker helps, and we are trying to understand how we can continue to grow bowlers to thrive at international level, in conjunction with the counties. Hopefully, we will see the fruits of this in a few years’ time. If we get it right, we will have a greater volume of options for our captains and coaches in selection.”