Having spent the last three years on the fringes of England's white-ball set-up, Luke Wood's selection in back-to-back T20I squads has set him on course for a central role as another T20 World Cup looms.
Striding across the outfield at Lord’s, a smiling Luke Wood concedes “there are worse ways” to spend your birthday. Generally people splash out on their 30th birthdays, but it’s not many who get the run of cricket’s most famous venue to celebrate entering their fourth decade. “I feel like I’m getting a bit older,” says Wood, thoughtfully. “But hopefully wiser.”
Turning 30 is often used, arbitrarily, as a staging post at which achievements, both personal and professional, are judged. Particularly in cricket, players are in the prime years of their career, but it won’t be long before they’re referred to in copy and on commentary as ‘a veteran’. For Wood, it feels like hitting that milestone may well bring a new lease of life.
Earlier this year, he was somewhat of a surprise recall to England’s T20I set-up for the first series of their fresh start under Harry Brook’s leadership. Wood hadn’t represented England since September 2023, when he played in a side missing most of their frontline bowlers ahead of the following month’s World Cup.
Being on the outskirts of the mainstream is a theme of Wood’s career. He was selected alongside the likes of Ben Duckett in England’s U19 World Cup squad in 2014 – a tournament in which they reached the semi-finals – but didn’t play a game. After struggling for a regular place in Nottinghamshire’s XIs over the previous two years, he left Trent Bridge to join Lancashire in 2019. It wasn’t until 2022 that he made his international debut, playing two T20Is in Pakistan as an audition for the T20 World Cup later that year, as well as a solitary ODI in Australia, having been flown out as a last minute injury cover for the white-ball winter down under.
Luke Wood will make his ODI debut for England against Australia today.
— Wisden (@WisdenCricket) November 17, 2022
The 27-year-old has played just four List A games in his career, the last being in 2019. pic.twitter.com/rGbLXvF2ER
Since then, Wood has become even more of a T20 specialist, and has played 192 T20s in his career compared to six List A games. He's played for 13 T20 teams, but hasn't played a single game in a different format since 2023. His appearances in an England shirt have been sporadic – nine in total – and mainly when some of their top brass of bowlers haven’t been available. However, having been identified as a powerplay specialist in Brook and McCullum’s T20 World Cup plans, he’s likely to be a big part of their next six months.
“I wasn’t entirely sure if my chance would come again,” says Wood. “Getting a bit older and it would have been easy [for England] to look down the younger route, which is fair enough. I didn’t expect to be in that white-ball series [against West Indies]... I was actually asleep when Brendon McCullum called me, and then Rob Key tried to call me and I was still asleep. But when I saw those numbers had come up on my phone in the morning it was clear what was going to happen.
“It was a bit different this time around. It wasn’t my first taste of it, so I didn’t have that expectation on myself of, ‘I really need to do well’. I just treated it like any other game and not put too much pressure on myself to exceed my own expectations.”
But Wood did do well. In Bristol, he struck with the first ball of the match, pinning Evin Lewis with a hooping yorker first up. Just as impressive was the dismissal he claimed when he came back for a second spell in the 16th over, switching skillsets away from the prodigious swing he got with the new ball, and bowling Johnson Charles an off-cutter which he under-edged onto his stumps. He was named Player of the Match, and was the pick of the bowlers in the final game of the series in Southampton as well.
It’s not hard to see why England like Wood for their reamped white-ball set-up. Few get as much movement with the new white-ball as Wood can generate, bowling from a left-arm angle and with pinpoint variations. With a clearly marked out role to operate exclusively in the powerplay, there are echoes of the role Sam Curran played for England in the 2022 World Cup, in which he was named Player of the Tournament, which perhaps they’re searching for again in Wood.
Wood has a winner’s medal from that tournament in 2022, having flown out as a replacement travelling reserve days before England’s first game, and not played a match. Having only featured in three T20Is before this summer in the intervening period, Wood has now been retained in England’s squads against South Africa and Ireland next month. Waiting round the corner is a T20 World Cup early next year, just over three years after England lifted that Trophy in Australia.
“It was amazing to be a part of that history, even though I was in the reserves,” says Wood. “I got a medal and a signed shirt, and those are memories that will live with you forever.
“I’m trying not to look too far ahead. It would be nice as a longer term goal to be involved [in the 2026 T20 World Cup], rather than being on the reserve side. But we just take each game as it comes.”
Had England not come calling again, Wood would have been more than able to make his living on the franchise circuit, as well as turning out for Lancashire. Having played alongside Jasprit Bumrah for Mumbai Indians in the IPL last year, he spent this winter playing in the ILT20 and PSL. He’s also on a white-ball only contract at Lancashire, although he still has the option to play Championship cricket on a pay as you play basis. From 63 first-class games, he has 137 wickets and two centuries.
“When I re-did my [contract] a couple of years ago, we did it on a white-ball basis,” says Wood. “Theoretically I can still play [red ball cricket], I’m not retired or anything, and I still have match fees in there, but it’s kind of at my discretion.
“I haven’t played [red ball cricket] for two years now. I think if I was to play red ball again I’d have to give up certain aspects of my winter. I wouldn’t be able to go from playing the whole winter in various places, which is my choice, to then come back here and play the whole county summer. My priority is that I had to give something up, and it made more sense to give red ball cricket more of a back seat. Obviously I’m 30 now, so I don’t want to limit myself to only playing for another four or five years by grinding myself into the ground by the full-on nature of the winter and summer.”
If Wood does make England’s squad for the T20 World Cup next year, it will give him the perfect shop window in which to make further bids for franchise selection. But, it would also give a notable peak to an international career largely spent on the fringes, and provide an opportunity to graduate from supporting cast, to a central figure.
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