"I hope my past hasn't put a label on me": Olly Stone fires reminder to England

SAM MORSHEAD - EXCLUSIVE: The setting might have been low-key - a warm-up game in an empty Boland Park - but the significance was unmissable: after two years of injury hell, here was Stone reaching devastating top speed in a national shirt

A single, flimsy camera and its intermittent online stream might have been the only way to see it, but this was all the evidence necessary: Olly Stone is back.

A brutish delivery nipped back off the seam, taking with it Jonny Bairstow’s off bail and leaving England’s swashbuckling batsman in a stupor, to remind those who did manage to see it just what the Warwickshire quick is capable of.

The setting might have been low-key - an intra-squad warm-up game in an empty Boland Park - but the significance was unmissable: after two years of injury hell, here was Stone reaching devastating top speed in a national shirt. 

There were times not too long ago when Stone, by his own admission, began to wonder if his chance had gone, his career having false started on multiple occasions.

After earning a reputation on the county circuit for his speed and incision, a freak ligament tear in 2016 - sustained celebrating a wicket - derailed his promising progression.

He recovered, regained form, made his white-ball and Test debuts, and then suffered twin stress fractures in the space of 12 months.

“It’s been tough at times,” he told The Cricketer in a conversation just before the England party flew out to South Africa. 

“Having been in the squads over the last couple of years, to then have those opportunities taken away from me not on form was quite tough to take.

^{Olly Stone impressed in a warm-up match on Monday}

“You do question whether you keep doing this for those reasons. If you put all the hard work in and then something happens, it does cross your mind whether you should look elsewhere but I know after sitting down and properly thinking about it that there’s only one place I want to be: out there playing for England.”

At 27, Stone might no longer fall under ‘raw and precocious’ but he is still blessed with the critical weapon of pace - as the wicket of Bairstow and his performance as a whole on Monday (3 for 12) showed.

Slight tweaks to his action over the past year, under the watchful eye of Graeme Welch at Edgbaston - specifically an effort to remain more upright in his delivery stride and efficient in his weight distribution - have been designed to prevent excess wear without his speed suffering as a result. 

That is just as well.

“My pace is my strength, my asset and I don’t ever want to go away from that. If at some point my body decides I can’t do that then it might be a time to change,” he said.

“That is me all over. It would be hard for me to go out on a cricket field and not be that person.”

LATEST ENGLAND NEWS

There have been changes off the field, too, specifically relating to his diet. Stone, a self-confessed foodie, discovered he had been eating too little.

“I sat down and had quite an in-depth discussion with the nutritionist. I felt I was eating enough but it was far from what I needed to fuel myself, which I was really unaware of at the time,” he said.

“If you don’t fuel yourself properly then that injury risk can go up. I always had the mindset of ‘I can’t eat loads and loads because I’ll put on the weight and that’s not necessarily good when it comes to the cricket’.

“In reality, I’ve probably eaten more than ever and I’m in the best shape possible, purely on the basis of doing it at the right time.

“I’m someone who loves food. It doesn’t mean I have to eat really bland food, I can still enjoy it. Don’t get me wrong, I do treat myself, but at the right time rather than maybe in the past at the wrong time.

“It’s been a nice change.”

Additional carbohydrates - ““another slice of toast at breakfast, maybe more porridge. At lunch more pasta and rice” - have been coupled with protein shakes at optimal times to recharge Stone’s body, all in the name of bowling faster for longer.

And the early proof from Paarl is positive.

^{Stone is in England's ODI squad in South Africa}

Stone’s other victims on Monday were Ben Stokes and Liam Livingstone, while half of his deliveries were dot balls. He is not part of the official 20-over squad for the three-match series which starts on November 27 but this was a mighty statement to give to captain Eoin Morgan, who saw the dismissal of Bairstow from the front row at the non-striker’s end, ahead of the 50-over fare. 

With Jofra Archer set to be rested from those matches, Stone will have the chance to stake a claim for a more regular place in the world champions’ starting XI. 

“I feel in the greatest place I can be right now, I’m not thinking about the past and trying to look forward. I want to show people what I can do, and win some games for England,” he said.

As one of several bowlers in the England squad in South Africa capable of clocking 90mph-plus, Stone is in his element - “I’d love to have four or five bowlers in a team who can do that job. There’s nothing better than people bowling fast” - but he recognises that in modern white-ball international cricket it can become very easy to be labelled one-dimensional.

With that in mind, he has been working with Welch on slower-ball variations in the nets back in Birmingham: a skill which takes time to master.

“Pace is great but it can be a bit predictable at times. If the best batsman in the world can get set to it then it becomes a bit easier for them,” he said. “To have a ball that deceives them a bit is great, and if you’ve got two or three of them then you’re winning.

“With my injuries, I haven’t had a lot of time to focus on different deliveries but in the last year and a half, coming through from my rehab, there has been more time to hone in on those skills.

“It’s very tricky. Growing up you don’t really bowl them. As a kid, I can’t remember bowling loads. When you’re trying to bowl a new delivery it feels so foreign in your hand so there’s a fear factor of actually running up and letting it go.

“You’re worried it might be a beamer, it might bounce by your feet, it might go in the side net. It’s about getting used to the feel of the ball in your hand and how it comes out; as soon as you’ve got that trust, that you know you can run in and bowl with the same arm speed as normal, you can then really start to feel confident and back your ability to run out there and land it wherever you need to in international cricket.

"I want to put performances together and show people that yes, I can get through and maybe it was a bit of bad luck"

“You’ve got to laugh about it. Me and Graeme have had some laughs. He’s asked me to bowl off a very short distance and hit the mitt with it. I said ‘what if I get it wrong and hit you on shin’.

“He told me not to worry about it and get on with it but I’m there thinking ‘I might hit him on the head here’. 

“I quite enjoy the challenge of trying to find new deliveries and something that’s a bit unique, trying to get the upper hand on the opposition.”

There will be a lot of people in cricket keeping fingers crossed for Stone as he makes another attempt at proving his worth to England this winter and beyond. For the player himself, what matters most is to be judged on how his performances to come and not his time out of the game.

“It would be silly to say you don’t notice the things that have been said. If you want to go looking for stuff, you’ll find it. I hope my past hasn’t put a label on me,” he said. “I think there will be people who will say I have had an injury-prone past but hopefully, moving forward, I can let the games do the talking.

“I want to put performances together and show people that yes, I can get through and maybe it was a bit of bad luck.”

Thanks to that scratchy stream from South Africa, we have evidence that Stone’s luck might just be starting to change.

Gift a subscription to The Cricketer this Christmas and choose your free gift (a £20 John Lewis gift card or copy of Bob Willis: A Cricketer & A Gentleman). Subscribe here