sport news PAUL NEWMAN: Chubby as a kid and nicknamed 'heavy roller', now Brook can be ... trends now
Harry Brook will look the epitome of the modern England cricketer when he makes his much-anticipated Test debut against South Africa tomorrow.
But his journey to the top could easily have been derailed by issues that had nothing to do with his ability with the bat.
Martin Speight took Brook under his wing when he arrived as a shy 14-year-old looking anything but a prospective professional at Sedbergh School in Cumbria where the former Sussex and Durham batsman is now director of cricket.
Harry Brook is set to make his much-anticipated Test debut against South Africa on Thursday
‘When I played you didn’t have to be super fit, it was just how good a cricketer you were,’ Speight tells Sportsmail. ‘But you have to be an athlete now and Harry was not, shall we say, very athletic when he arrived.
‘During lockdown I had a Zoom call with Harry and he described himself when he was at school as the heavy roller. He was very poor at running and not athletic at all but clearly a very talented cricketer.’
So Speight got to work with the young Yorkshireman as much off the field as on it. ‘He knew he had to get better,’ says Speight. ‘We arranged for him to see the school athletics coach and for two years he spent two sessions a week basically learning to run well.
‘He got himself into the gym and started working hard at everything he did. It took him a while but he became the whole package. That was key to his development.’
But overhauling the heavy roller was far from the most significant part Speight has played in the making of an exciting talent who will step in for the injured Jonny Bairstow at the Kia Oval after being in the England Test squad all summer.
Speight was somewhat ahead of his time in the 1990s as an unorthodox stroke-maker and was one of the first to start sweeping faster bowlers, and it was to him that Brook turned to correct a technical issue that emerged in his early years at Headingley.
The batsman will step in for the injured Jonny Bairstow against South Africa at the Kia Oval
‘He did very well in his first year after leaving school but he had some flaws that had crept in and a few years ago we completely rebooted his set-up, stance and his triggers,’ says Speight, 54. ‘The end product is four years later he is where he is.
‘Harry always stood very still at the crease but as time went on he started putting too much weight on his back leg. His hips and shoulders would open up and his bat would come down from gully. He’d play across straight balls or nick ones that weren’t really doing a lot.
‘He spoke to me and said, “This isn’t working”. He felt he needed to go back
