England’s New Pace Pack: A Promising Attack for the Ashes

The numbers sparkle, the caveats linger. Pakistan’s batting has been flimsy. The pitches have been obliging. But at Lord’s, as Pakistan folded for 109 on day two of the second Test, England’s new-look pace attack felt like more than a passing experiment.

Ollie Robinson, Jofra Archer, Josh Tongue and Gus Atkinson. No Anderson. No Broad. No Stokes. Yet this four-man unit, born partly out of necessity after Ben Stokes’ retirement, suddenly looks like something England have spent years searching for: a pace attack with teeth, variety and, crucially, room to grow.

Root’s New Battery

After the first-Test win at Headingley, Joe Root did not bother hiding his excitement. His quicks, he said, “do not know how good they can be.” He was not just talking them up. He was drawing a line between this group and the old guard he once captained.

During his previous stint as Test captain, Root turned time and again to the familiar right-arm seamers: James Anderson, Stuart Broad, Chris Woakes, Ben Stokes. Brilliant servants, legendary in some cases, but broadly similar in style. This time, he believes he has something different.

Variation is the word. Pace, angle, method. And it starts with speed.

Fire at One End, Needlework at the Other

England’s response to last winter’s Ashes defeat was clear: find pace, and lots of it. At Lord’s, that policy roared into life.

Archer, back in full rhythm, was touching 95mph in the quickest opening spell of his career. Lightning at one end. At the other, Robinson operated at around 78mph, barely in the same bracket on the speed gun, yet every bit as dangerous.

Tongue’s average pace across the series actually sits higher than Archer’s, even if Archer has sent down a greater percentage of balls over 90mph. Atkinson slots in just behind them, a shade slower but still brisk enough to trouble anyone.

They share the load, share the hostility. Archer even joked he could play until he is 40 with this kind of support around him. The point was clear: this is no one-man show.

Former captain Michael Vaughan has seen enough to be intrigued. “It is a good attack,” he said. “They can all get better and that is a really good sign.

“This batting line-up is possibly the easiest I have seen to bowl to but this attack, bowling the way they are doing, will challenge better batting line-ups.

“They will challenge the Australia line-up quite nicely if they bowl like this.”

That last line will not have gone unnoticed. A home Ashes is less than a year away.

Robinson, the Metronome with a Knife Edge

What Robinson lacks in pace, he is ruthlessly replacing with precision. Four more wickets on Friday took him to 17 for the summer at a staggering average of 8.84 across three Tests.

The surfaces have helped. Lively English pitches have allowed Robinson to lean into his greatest strength: relentless control of line and length.

Against Pakistan, 70% of his deliveries have landed on a good length. No other England seamer in this series comes close. Atkinson sits next best at 52%.

The effect has been suffocating. Pakistan’s batters have spent long stretches groping forward, prodding, waiting for a release ball that never comes. On Friday, Robinson sent down 31 consecutive dot balls. Thirteen overs for just 11 runs – the most economical figures by a pace bowler sending down 10 or more overs in England for 13 years.

“Ollie Robinson is an extraordinarily skillful bowler,” Vaughan said. England’s coaches want a touch more speed from him – up towards 81mph on a consistent basis – and believe that, if he finds it, he will trouble “all batting line-ups in all conditions.”

For now, he has been exactly what England lacked during the winter: the tone-setter.

Archer, Tongue, Atkinson: Angles and Targets

Archer brings more than raw speed. His natural angle into the left-hander makes him a nightmare for southpaws. He averages 23.9 against them, compared with 31.3 against right-handers. In an era where teams stack their top orders with left-handers to blunt traditional right-arm seam, that is a serious weapon.

The balance of the attack sharpens from there. Tongue and Atkinson are almost Archer’s mirror image.

Tongue averages 21.5 against right-handers but 35.7 against lefties. Atkinson’s split is similar: 19.9 against right-handers, 31.7 against southpaws. Put them together and England can pick their angles, target their match-ups, and attack both edges of a batting order.

Tongue’s method is particularly brutal. His position on the crease, slightly angled in, feeds into his obsession with the stumps. Across this series, 22% of his deliveries would have hit the timbers. At Headingley, where he took eight wickets in the first Test, that figure climbed to 29% – the highest by an England bowler in a home Test for 15 years.

On Friday, he added two more wickets, nudging his strike-rate to a wicket every 39.8 balls. That places him 12th on the all-time list of bowlers to have taken 30 Test wickets. Not bad for a man still finding his way at this level.

“Tongue is the one who is really developing the best of them,” observed Jonathan Agnew. The numbers back him up.

Promise, With a Warning Label

There is a catch. There has to be. Pakistan’s batting has been brittle. The conditions have been helpful. This is not a hardened Australia or India grinding England’s quicks into the dirt over five days.

The temptation is to get carried away. The wiser response is to mark this down as a thrilling start, not a completed project.

Yet the signs are hard to ignore. A four-man pace attack with contrasting speeds, angles and methods. A metronome in Robinson, a spearhead in Archer, a stumps-hunter in Tongue, a lively support act in Atkinson. All of them still with room to improve.

A home Ashes series is less than a year away. If this is England’s pace blueprint, how good could it look when Australia walk through the Long Room at Lord’s?