Toby Roland-Jones tells Jon Batham that extra pace is not his goal as he targets another England call-up
TOBY Roland-Jones will resist any calls to find ‘an extra yard of pace’ in his quest for another England call-up.
It’s been a meteoric few months for the Middlesex paceman since he made the XIII but not the XI for the Test with Pakistan at Lord’s last summer.
The hat-trick hero as Middlesex clinched the Championship last September, the 29-year-old seamer also impressed on the Lions’ tour to Sri Lanka over the winter.
Then, only last month, ‘Ro-Jo’ was named one of the five Wisden Cricketers of the Year, a feat not achieved by a Middlesex quick since his now director of cricket Angus Fraser, with whom bowling comparisons could be drawn, scooped the award in 1996.
He concedes self-effacingly he is on a ‘good avenue’ at present and on the international radar, but thereon lies temptation.
Roland-Jones’s Middlesex team-mate James Harris was on this road a while back and lost something of his bowling identity in the attempt to find that elusive ‘yard’, collateral damage we might say in England’s quest for the next big thing.
Understandably then, Roland-Jones is clear he won’t be following that particular fork in the road, content instead to trust whatever has got him this far and leave the rest to the cricketing gods.
“Another yard of pace is certainly not something I’m looking to add to my game,” he said. “I think you have got to recognise sometimes what has put you in the position to play for the England Lions. If you are being recognised for certain things that get you into that position, sometimes it is best to really focus in on them.
“I’m the sort of person who is always seeking improvements, but I wouldn’t say pace is necessarily one of them. If it is a by-product of being in a better position at the crease or improving my approach to the crease then so be it, but I’m not doing anything technical for the pure outcome of getting more pace.”
Roland-Jones’s uncompromising stance might prove wise for a late developer whose talents have seen him rise from weekend club cricketer to bowling spearhead of the county champions in seven years.
Yet those cricketing gods do move in mysterious ways as his pathway in the sport may have been very different, not involving bouncers, yorkers, rhythm and the like.
The Ashford-born right-armer inherited his love of the game from older brother Oliver and, like Ollie, his first passion was for batting, so the battles in the garden were over who got the willow rather than the leather.
“Maybe I caught cricket a little bit from Oliver,” he said. “I guess being able to play with him in an older age group was something that can help anyone’s development really in terms of getting access to slightly more grown-up cricket at a younger age. More than anything it sparked my interest.
“There wasn’t a lot of sibling rivalry though, not overly so anyway. The age gap was probably enough that we generally went different ways.
“We had a little spell at Hampton School where we opened the batting together in his last year, which was very enjoyable. Oliver certainly was the front-runner in that partnership.”
For the most part then, TRJ was content with little-brother status, that is until the acquiring of some extra few inches late in his teenage years meant it was with ball in hand that he suddenly achieved centre stage for club side Sunbury.
Yet he believes still being a rough diamond when it came to bowling played in his favour when Middlesex came knocking.
“About 17, I guess, I had a second growth spurt and, coupled with the batting going slightly the wrong way, it led to the bowling being more of a focal point for me,” he said.
“Bowling coming later helped because it meant I wasn’t overly coached in it, so by the time I was lucky enough to be picked up at Middlesex, I was still quite raw and someone who (bowling coach) Richard Johnson felt he could mould.
“I didn’t have too many deep-set attributes that couldn’t be changed, which certainly helped as we were able to get me into some better positions fairly quickly.”
Nevertheless, in an era obsessed with the idea of all-rounders, do those once-prized batting skills, still seen in some belligerent contributions down the order for the tenants of Lord’s, give him an advantage over other wannabes in the England Test queue behind Messrs Anderson and Broad?
“I’ve not got a target to be a certain mould,” he added, “but everyone wants to contribute as much as they can and certainly I enjoy doing my best to have any impact with the bat in a game.
“These days, looking across the counties, it is important to have strong batting contributions from 7-10 as well as the top order, so I would certainly like to think I could help with that.”
This piece originally featured in The Cricket Paper, May 19 2017
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