About the Product

• Cover story – Phil Walker takes a trip to Mark Wood’s hometown to meet the England fast bowler who, in the words of his ex-bowling coach Kevin Shine, “is different to pretty much any fast bowler we’ve got or have had”. Wood reflects on his singular career so far, including last summer’s World Cup win and an electrifying recent tour of South Africa, as he gives WCM’s editor-in-chief a guided tour of Ashington, a small town with extraordinary sporting heritage that was once the centre of the north-east’s coal-mining industry.
• Columnist Andrew Miller considers what the game might look like when it re-emerges from its lockdown.
• Graham Thorpe talks to John Stern about how he learnt to enjoy cricket again.
• Shahid Afridi picks out the defining moments from his hair-raising career. “My approach has always been to never fear failure,” the Pakistani all-rounder tells Saj Sadiq.
• We preview the new county season, even as its future hangs in the balance. Lawrence Booth celebrates Northants and Gloucestershire punching above their weight to kick off a section which also includes an interview with Essex’s new captain Tom Westley and Taha Hashim’s feature on where things have gone wrong for Middlesex since their 2016 County Championship triumph. Meanwhile, county columnist Elizabeth Ammon argues the end of Kolpaks is to the benefit of English cricket as a whole.
• Adam Collins writes that while the Women’s T20 World Cup and Amazon’s new docu-series The Test have both extolled the virtues of Australian cricket, the latter shouldn’t be taken at face value.
• Geoff Cook, the godfather of Durham cricket, picks his county’s Greatest XI.
• Leg-spin secrets from Afghanistan’s Rashid Khan in our coaching section.
• Martin Tyler, Sky’s voice of football, recalls standing in as 12th man for Surrey and living with two Test captains.
• The Club Debate: Rich Evans considers the key factors behind player recruitment.