“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.”