Ageing fast bowlers still delivering the goods despite the strain on their bodies

Keith Barker has taken more than 700 professional wickets. At 39 years old, he is one of several experienced or, if we’re feeling mean, “old” bowlers in this year’s County Championship who are still shining.

“Early on,” says Barker, “I couldn’t understand how people were able to hit an area so consistently. But I think when you get older and you bowl for quite a while, it becomes second nature that you can bowl with a ­different variety of skills.”

The proof is in the wicket tables, which after three weeks of County Championship action are tinged with grey. After three rounds of fixtures, Kyle Abbott, 38, was the leading wicket taker in Division One. While 43-year-old James Anderson (yep, that one) was top of the pile in Division Two, with Harry Conway (a relatively youthful 33), Ben Sanderson (37) and Toby Roland-Jones (38) immediately behind him. “There’s a lot of hype on speed,” says Barker. “But you can still have a career if you’re highly skilled and accurate.”

All fast bowlers are medical marvels; but old fast bowlers are medical miracles. With every delivery, up to 10 times their body weight goes through their front knee. Barker has had three surgeries to show for it.

And if it isn’t their knees taking the punishment, it’s their backs, with stress fractures commonplace among young quicks whose bodies are still growing. After Covid, there was a spate of stress fractures across the game that was put down to bowlers losing the bone-density in their backs due to inactivity. “The rate of loss is equivalent to what we see from astronauts in space,” said England and Wales Cricket Board doctor Peter Alway back in 2022. Alway has a PhD in the field of lumbar stress fractures. “It’s basically as fast as anyone has ever seen bone density decrease.”

For that reason, it is little wonder that Barker places much of his longevity down to management of his own exertion. “This is going to sound a bit weird,” says Barker tentatively. “But I don’t think I ever bowl at 100%.

“It’s more about trying to keep myself controlled, but I’m always working in that 80% range and just trying to make sure I stay accurate and commit to a tall release point. And with the right skill, then I’m always in with a chance.”

Barker made his first appearance of the season for Warwickshire last week in a long awaited return to the county who first gave him his professional debut at the age of 22. Playing against Essex, he claimed 4-29 in the second innings, including three top-order wickets in an over, to set up a thrilling 41-run win. “Without a doubt it’s ­amazing,” Barker said of playing for Warwick­shire again after six years at Hampshire. “It’s where it all began for me.”

The move has been particularly poignant after Barker served a 12-month doping suspension that ended in July of last year. He had been prescribed what was meant to be a like-for-like medication to treat his long-standing high blood pressure, but unbeknown to him, it contained a prohibited substance.

Hampshire, his county at the time, described it as a “genuine mistake”, while UK Anti-Doping ruled that Barker had “no intention to breach the anti-doping rules”. Nevertheless, Barker, who was 37 when the ban started, feared his career was over.

“I didn’t want to leave Hampshire,” Barker says. “But obviously the club didn’t feel I had it in me any more.

“So I never thought I’d come back to Warwickshire. But the fact I was able to, and kind of prove that I still had a little bit, and walk back out there wearing a Warwickshire shirt was a really proud moment for me.”

It is a counterintuitive position for the elder seamers to be in. A body that can do less, but an arm that delivers more. For the likes of Barker and Roland-Jones, the latter stages of their careers have seen them produce their best numbers. Both have averaged 22 in first-class cricket over the past five years, a period that has brought their career average down to 24.9 and 24.7 respectively.

“I think my highest level is not as high as it used to be,” says Roland-Jones, who played four Tests for England in 2017. “When I was at my very best I felt like I could really have a bit more pace and bowl a spell that could really sort of change the game. And getting older, it’s just adapting your game to the circumstances you find yourself in.”

The ceiling is lower, but the floor is higher, with consistency now considered king.

Roland-Jones agrees. “The intensity of what I do might be a fraction lower,” he says, comparing himself with the bowler he was of yesteryear. “I still feel like I’m delivering at 100%, but it’s probably 100% of 80%, if that makes sense.”

In all, the message is that a craft honed can be worth more than a craft developing. For years, fast bowlers put their bodies through hell in pursuit of perfection and pace. And for those who make it to their late thirties, the reward is more wickets, for the price of (slightly) less effort.

“I think I’ve accepted that I will push my body as hard as I can to help perform for the team,” says Barker. “And if it goes, it goes.”

With his 40th birthday approaching, no one will blame him if it does.

Photograph by Warren Little/Getty Images