Despite bowling quickly on occasions, Wood averaged 41.73 with the ball across his first 12 Tests. Then, on the advice of West Indies legend Michael Holding, he lengthened his run-up and using it for the first time, took 5-41 in the first innings of the third Test against West Indies in Saint Lucia in 2019.<\/p>\n
“That was the fastest. I could be biased because I thought it was a breakthrough moment in my career but when I was watching the ball carry off the nicks, they felt a long way in the slips. <\/p>\n
“You feel weightless, like you’re never tired and are just picking up speed. It feels like you have all of this momentum and loose energy to release. You feel a surge through your body and then a whip out of your fingers.<\/p>\n
“That day I didn’t have to try. Root could have put the field anywhere and I wouldn’t have cared. I was so up in my action. I can remember my feet landing and the feeling of the balls on my fingers – the seam ripping up my fingers.<\/p>\n
“I essentially had two different careers \u2013 the first one in and out of the team with good moments but struggling with ankle injuries and form. I felt I had to constantly push myself with that stop-start run-up to get the most out of myself. <\/p>\n
“As soon as I went off my longer run I had much more momentum, flow and freedom and the ability to bowl consistently quicker for longer.<\/p>\n
“When I lengthened my run-up, if it was below 90mph I was annoyed.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Despite bowling quickly on occasions, Wood averaged 41.73 with the ball across his first 12 Tests. Then, on…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":610674,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[111,139,69,213],"class_list":["post-610673","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/610673","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=610673"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/610673\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/610674"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=610673"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=610673"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=610673"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}