England’s New Pace Attack: A Glimpse of the Future
Any celebration of England’s fast bowling this summer comes with a warning label. Pakistan’s batting has looked fragile, and these are forgiving English pitches. But strip away the caveats and something unmistakable remains: England have stumbled onto a pace attack that looks built for the next era.
Ben Stokes’ retirement forced a rethink. Out of that disruption, a four-man unit has taken shape at Lord’s – Ollie Robinson, Jofra Archer, Josh Tongue and Gus Atkinson – and on day two of the second Test they tore through Pakistan for 109. Not just quick. Not just clever. Crucially, different.
After the first-Test win at Headingley, Joe Root could sense it. His assessment was blunt: his quicks “do not know how good they can be”. The former captain, who spent years tossing the ball to James Anderson, Stuart Broad, Chris Woakes and Stokes, suggested this current crop already offers more variation than the great right-arm seam battery he once relied upon.
This is the pace attack England spent the Ashes dreaming about. Back then, selection leaned too late towards speed. Now, the dial is set firmly to “hostile”.
At Lord’s, Archer thundered in at up to 95mph, the fastest opening burst of his career. At the Pavilion End, Robinson ambled in at around 78mph. On paper, the contrast jars. On grass, it’s a nightmare to face.
Tongue, across the series, has actually clocked a higher average speed than Archer, even if Archer sends down a greater share of balls above 90mph. Atkinson sits just behind them, a fraction slower but no less threatening, and Archer could afford to joke he might play until he is 40 with this kind of shared workload.
“It is a good attack,” said former England captain Michael Vaughan. “They can all get better and that is a really good sign.
“This batting line-up is possibly the easiest I have seen to bowl to but this attack, bowling the way they are doing, will challenge better batting line-ups.
“They will challenge the Australia line-up quite nicely if they bowl like this.”
That’s the key. It isn’t only about this Pakistan series. It’s about what this quartet might do when the opposition stiffens and the Ashes return to English soil.
Robinson is the clearest example of how this attack meshes. What he lacks in sheer pace, he replaces with suffocating precision. Four more wickets on Friday took him to 17 for the summer at an extraordinary average of 8.84 across three Tests. Those numbers are not built on magic balls. They are built on repetition.
On lively English pitches, Robinson has been able to double down on his greatest strength: control of line and length. Against Pakistan, 70% of his deliveries have hit a good length. No one else in the attack gets close. Atkinson is next at 52%.
The result? Pakistan’s batters have lived in a permanent examination. Very few releases, almost no freebies. On Friday, Robinson sent down 31 consecutive dot balls. His 13 overs cost just 11 runs – the most economical analysis by a pace bowler sending down 10 or more overs in England for 13 years.
“Ollie Robinson is an extraordinarily skillful bowler,” Vaughan said. “[England] are trying to get him to 81mph more consistently and if he can get to that he will challenge all batting line-ups in all conditions.
“He has been the tone-setter we were crying out for in the winter.”
If Robinson sets the tone, Archer twists the knife. His natural angle into the left-hander makes him particularly dangerous. The numbers underline it: he averages 23.9 against left-handers, compared with 31.3 against right-handers. For a side eyeing up an Australia team stacked with southpaws, that matters.
The symmetry within the attack is striking. Tongue and Atkinson are almost the inverse. Tongue averages 21.5 against right-handers but 35.7 against left-handers. Atkinson’s record stands at 19.9 versus right-handers and 31.7 against lefties. Pick the right combination for the right batting order and Root suddenly has options his previous teams never enjoyed.
Tongue brings something else: a relentless assault on the stumps. His position on the crease drags the ball into the pads and timber. Across this series, 22% of his deliveries would have hit the stumps. At Headingley, where he claimed eight wickets in the first Test, that figure climbed to 29% – the highest by an England bowler in a home Test for 15 years.
The pressure finally told again on Friday. Two more wickets pushed Tongue’s strike-rate to a wicket every 39.8 balls. That places him 12th on the all-time list of bowlers with at least 30 Test wickets. Early days, yes, but serious company.
“Tongue is the one who is really developing the best of them,” said Jonathan Agnew, watching a bowler growing into his role with every spell.
So where does this leave England? A home Ashes series is less than a year away. Archer roaring in at 95mph, Robinson nagging away on a sixpence, Tongue attacking the stumps, Atkinson filling in the gaps with pace and bounce – this is no longer a theoretical attack on a selection whiteboard.
Conditions will change. Opponents will be stronger. The questions will be harder.
But for the first time in a while, England’s answers with the ball look like they might be fast enough, varied enough and ruthless enough to match the stage.
