When watching sport we rarely know what is going on
behind the scenes.
Across formats, seamer Lauren Bell took an impressive 18
wickets in nine internationals during the English summer.
She took nine in eight during a more mediocre season in The
Hundred.
Throughout it all, the 23-year-old has been grappling with
the very thing a sportsperson tries to protect: Bell has been going through a
painstaking remodelling of her action.
"The worst place you can be as a bowler is overthinking
your technique in a game," she says in a fascinating chat with the OceanNewsUK’s
Tailenders podcast. "It is not a nice place to be.
"You are going to care how you bowl and how you do but
some of those games I was going in thinking my focus is technique.
"Because I was changing my technique I had to think
about it so much because it wasn’t natural."
Bell first made her name in the inaugural season of The
Hundred in 2021. She was a tall seamer with decent pace, who had an uncanny
ability to hoop an inswinger into a right-handed batter.
An international debut came the following summer.
But after two impressive seasons at the top of the women’s
game, and after England had drawn but not won the Ashes, Bell decided she
wanted more.
"I sat down with Mase [England women's fast-bowling
coach Matt Mason] and Lewy [head coach Jon Lewis] and said 'how am I going to
push my game forward?'" Bell says.
It was decided the very thing that made Bell good was
actually holding her back.
Her action allowed her to bowl that inswinger but the way
she fell to the left in her delivery stride made it all-but impossible to swing
the ball the other way.
"I had back pain quite a lot," says Bell.
"And secondly bowling inswing was my only option
because I fell away so much.
"We said to get better I would like more pace, more
bounce and in time it would allow me access to swing the ball both ways."
A decision to change was made but there were doubts at
first.
"For a good few months I would do a couple of session
and be like 'no I don’t want to change it'," Bell says.
"It took until I got back from New Zealand in March to
jump in two feet."
There have been countless hours of drills with Mason away
from the cameras. Lewis, himself a former bowling coach, has overseen the
changes.
"We did so much technical stuff," Bell says.
"What I have done is tried to get more upright by
having two feet on the floor, dragging my back foot so it is not in the air and
I fall over."
Bell is not the first bowler to go through a reworking of
their action.
James Anderson, England men’s most successful Test bowler,
famously did so. Mitchell Johnson did similar too as he went from the butt of
Barmy Army jokes to Ashes destroyer.
Bell, though, has had to do so while playing an entire
English summer.
There has been success but also occasional difficult
moments. In Bell’s four one-day internationals this summer she bowled 17 wides.
"It is not an overnight fix which I have worked out
over the last six months," she says.
"Every time I have a good session I hope I have got it
and then I play a game or another session and think 'not quite yet'.
"My skillset is now different, where I put my wrist.
"Before I just bowled and it would go [swing] in.
"Now it is like I am like a real fast bowler. I have to
choose with my wrist which way I am going to swing it."
Bell is now in the United Arab Emirates, where England begin
their T20 World Cup campaign against Bangladesh on Saturday.
After another block of training she believes she is in a
good place with her new technique.
"I have got to a place where I am really happy with the
technical stuff and I have realised just because I have it [the outswinger] it
doesn’t mean it is the best ball I am able to bowl," she says.
"Since I have learned it I have wanted to bowl it over
and over again and show everyone I can do it. I forgot the whole point of
bowling is to read conditions and players.
"I ended up forgetting all of those things and thinking
I am going to bowl my away-swinger today because I have just bowled it really
well in training."
