Mark Footitt interview: My late rise has been bonkers

It is every cricketer’s dream to step on to a plane for a Test tour but Mark Footitt would have been more teary-eyed than most at Heathrow last Thursday as he could have been forgiven for thinking his chance had flown.

The pace bowler turned 30 in November, which makes him one of the elder statesmen in a touring party packed with youthful promise. In Test terms, though, he is as green as an English wicket in mid-April.

Released by Nottinghamshire in 2009, he says he would have called you “bonkers” had you suggested then he would be preparing six years later to make his England debut.

Now, though, Footitt’s call-up is not so much crazy as calculated, as coach Trevor Bayliss attempts to build a bowling attack with the pace and variety to trouble one of the world’s best batting line-ups on their own patch.

Footitt provides both pace and variety in one package: by common consent, he is the quickest bowler in the English first-class game – maybe matched on the speedometer only by Sussex’s Tymal Mills – and the variety comes from him being a left-armer. It is not outlandish to suggest he could even be the fastest left-arm bowler in English cricket history. As Footitt acknowledges, however, pace is not everything.

“When you get older you learn that bowling isn’t just about speed,” he told The Independent when we caught up with him as he was finishing his packing for South Africa, one of cricket’s toughest tours. “When you bowl quick it’s still all about putting the ball in the right areas. Left-armers are the in thing at the moment, across all formats of the game. It obviously does cause a different angle and does ask the batsman different questions.

“People rolled out the comparisons with Mitchell Johnson as soon as I was picked in the summer [when he was in an England squad for the Ashes]. He’s a fantastic international bowler, and still would be if he hadn’t retired. I’m just happy if people want to mention my name in the same sentence as his.”

If Footitt needs any inspiration as a latecomer to international cricket, he should remember that Graeme Swann famously made his Test bow at age 29 and ended his career with a haul of 255 wickets in 60 Test matches.

Surrey’s new signing might struggle to equal that, but he could be handed the chance to show that he has plenty to offer in South Africa under a coach who encourages fearless cricket – a rise he may not have seen coming.

“The last 12 months have been pretty crazy,” Footitt says. “Last winter I was away with the other England fast bowlers in the performance programme in South Africa but after that it was just training with Derby, really. This is something completely different.

“It was great to be part of the training squad for the Ashes because as a cricketer you want to be playing at the highest level. It was a great experience to be part of the squad for the fourth Test [at Trent Bridge].

“I suppose I have come through relatively late but until someone comes and tells me that I’m never going to get that chance it’s something that I would never give up on.

“When you start playing professionally it’s your dream to represent your country and play at the highest level you can. There have been ups and downs in the past 10 years but now everything has come together. I think I’ve still got a lot of miles left in me.”

As the man himself suggests, for a bowler earmarked as a potential England star from an early age Footitt’s career has not developed at the pace of one of his left-arm thunderbolts.

In the glorious summer of 2005, when England regained the Ashes for the first time in a generation, Footitt was tearing in for England Under-19s against Sri Lanka. He made his Nottinghamshire debut in the same season and snared Sourav Ganguly as his opening first-class victim at Trent Bridge.

With his ferocious pace, it appeared more a question of when, rather than if, a call-up to the senior England team would come. Yet within five years, Footitt was not only looking for a new county but wondering whether he had a future in the sport at all.

He left Nottinghamshire having taken just 23 wickets in nine first-class matches and after missing the whole of the 2008 season with a bulging disc in his back, so it was a brave move by Derbyshire when they eventually came in for him after he had packed his bags at Trent Bridge.

“Having already served what I refer to as a cricketing apprenticeship at Nottinghamshire, now he has the opportunity to join Derbyshire and show us what he is about,” said John Morris, then the Derbyshire coach, after offering Footitt a fresh start.

Neither the player nor the county, though, could have predicted the extraordinary impact he would have.

“At the end of 2009 I would have said you were bonkers if someone had told me what would end up happening – I just wouldn’t have believed it,” he says. “Playing at Derbyshire has been a great honour because they gave me another chance to play first-class cricket. I’ve got a lot to thank for them for.

“The past two or three years I’ve been learning more and more and if you’re playing regularly for a so-called smaller county then it does help. I’ve had great guidance from Graeme Welch [Derbyshire’s elite performance director] over the past couple of years. He has been incredible. He keeps things very simple.”

Footitt, in contrast, has been making things increasingly complicated for Second Division batsmen. He took 82 County Championship wickets in 2014 and 106 across all formats. Last season he completed an equally impressive haul of 73 at a cost of just 23.

In South Africa, of course, Footitt will be able to watch another bowler who takes his wickets at next to nothing in the shape of Dale Steyn, the world’s No 1-ranked fast bowler and a man with 402 Test wickets to his name.

Impressive as that is, it is still 24 fewer than Jimmy Anderson’s Test tally – and Footitt believes England should not have any kind of inferiority complex going into the coming series.

“I think Jimmy Anderson and Stuart Broad are up there with the best in the world,” he says. “They’ve been there and done it against the best teams in the world.

“Of course, it’s going to be tough for the batters out there because South Africa have got one of the best bowling line-ups in international cricket. It will be good for me to watch, even if I’m batting against them at the time.

“I’ve had quite a lot of batting practice in South Africa prior to me going out there again now, so hopefully my technique will stand up, at least for a decent amount of balls. I think I’ve improved quite a lot in the nets.”

It is as a bowler and on the field of play, though, that Footitt’s contribution will be measured and, after a lengthy wait, it is time for him to show he’s made of the right stuff.