The 36-year-old leaves with 119 Test wickets at 30.8 and 80 one-day international wickets at 40.8, figures that need dissecting. He sparkled when it mattered in 50-over cricket, taking 18 wickets in the 2019 World Cup triumph<\/a>, and there is a clear before-and-after with the red ball. Having made his debut in 2015, it took nearly four years for it all to click together, only after Wood lengthened his run-up and was told by Trevor Bayliss that he wanted to see a bit more \u201cmongrel\u201d from his quick.<\/p>\n Wood responded by clocking 95mph on the way to his first Test five-wicket haul, against West Indies in February 2019 at the age of 29, setting up his own Benjamin Button tale. From that Test in St Lucia, his 13th, until his last, he averaged 27, all while hurling the ball with a lithe frame at obscene, unhealthy speeds.<\/p>\n The magic was in how he would spend time in hibernation, recovering from his latest blow, and return fully restored. When Wood rocked up in Leeds in the summer of 2023, with England 2-0 down in the Ashes, he hadn\u2019t played a game since turning out in the Indian Premier League three months earlier. He hadn\u2019t bowled in a home Test for two years. Out came a four-over spell in which he stayed above 90mph every ball, signing it off with the killer punch: bedtime for Usman Khawaja\u2019s leg stump, the rhythm of the contest turned over<\/a>. Wood crunched a few with his bat too, played the next two Tests and England levelled up the series.<\/p>\n Mark Wood, here with Joe Root, was popular with his teammates. Photograph: Steve Bell\/Getty Images<\/p>\n It looks like a dreamy career. Wood took the Ashes-winning wicket in 2015 and thrived in Australia too, with 17 wickets in that dire Covid-era tour while everything else around him imploded. Beyond the 50-over World Cup, he was key when England won the 20-over equivalent<\/a> four years ago, taking nine wickets in four group-stage games. Any up-and-comer with a braced front leg would gladly take all that. But we haven\u2019t got to the pain yet. What Wood did for a decade is never going to agree with the human body.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ve had numerous shoulder jabs, stress fracture in my back, tore my side about four times, so that\u2019s two knee operations, two elbow operations, three on my ankle, and I reckon \u2013 without an exaggeration \u2013 maybe 60 to 80 jabs in my ankle,\u201d Wood said on the Sky cricket podcast last year, running through his various afflictions while keeping his humour intact. \u201cThe amount of tape I go through, I\u2019m like a mummy at times.\u201d<\/p>\n There\u2019s the moment it all goes wrong, the hospital walls, the monotony of rehabilitation, the return, then repeat, turning it into a serious mental battle, too. There are the games he\u2019s missed, including the knockouts of the T20 World Cup he won, because of a hip injury. After the highs of Lord\u2019s in 2019, he missed the Ashes that summer with knee and side problems. So the question to Wood is obvious if maybe quite silly: was the pain worth it?<\/p>\n
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