Mark Wood bowled ferociously against Sri Lanka and Milan Rathnayake showed incredible character to score a debut 50 – but here is the key to playing fast bowling, writes NASSER HUSSAIN

I don’t know anyone who loves playing fast bowling.

It’s just a case of getting better at reacting to it and ultimately trying to get through it.

Mark Wood broke Kevin Sinclair’s arm in the West Indies series with a 92mph bumper and he went one better with a 93mph bouncer to get rid of Kusal Mendis on Wednesday.

Our Sky cameras worked out that it took just 0.46 seconds from leaving Wood’s hand to reaching the bat. That’s ridiculously quick but you have to believe in your reactions.

The key for me was to react to the pitch of the ball rather than premeditate a shot.

Mark Wood impressed with a ferocious spell of bowling as England dismissed Sri Lanka for 236

Wood’s 93mph bouncer to get rid of Kusal Mendis on Wednesday was a ridiculous delivery

It came after Wood broke Kevin Sinclair’s arm in the West Indies series with a 92mph bumper

You’d be amazed at how good your reactions are if someone throws a ball at you but you have to be watching the ball all the way because that is the only way you can react in time.

And you have to have the fight and guts and realise you’ll take some blows as Milan Rathnayake did, coming in at eight, getting hit on the hands umpteen times, getting the physio on and going again.

Sri Lanka would have known it was coming with the likes of Wood and Gus Atkinson so you have to prepare. There’s no point going in the nets and having some gentle half volleys thrown at you.

Before my first tour of the Caribbean as a 21-year-old, Geoffrey Boycott had us in the nets at Headingley with young bowlers bowling from 16 yards and he told me to put a chest pad on. Ever since then, I wore a chest pad and psychologically, that helped.

Graham Thorpe would get balls hurled at him from various distances before an overseas tour. Before going to the Caribbean, he’d get people to throw tennis balls at him and he’d be ducking and diving and taking it on. It can look ugly but you have to find a way.

Both Graham Gooch and Robin Smith were amazing players of pace but even they would get themselves in a tangle. There’s that famous picture of our physio Laurie Brown and Gooch’s face in agony when he famously got hit by Ezra Moseley in Trinidad and broke his hand.

Steve Waugh always looked uncomfortable but it very rarely got him out.

You have to have a plan. Are you fending it, are you ducking it or are you taking it on?

Mark Butcher was magnificent at ducking under and you could see the air go out of the opposition bowlers. Others like Alec Stewart backed themselves to take it on and his famous twin hundreds in 1994 in Barbados showed the reward in that.

The difficulty is when they’re not actually that short like Wood’s delivery to Mendis . Wood is skiddy so his bouncers are often at you instead of those wasted ones that go over your head. In Jofra Archer’s spell to Steve Smith at Lord’s in 2019, he was so close to the stumps and the bouncer was always at the body so it was so hard to duck or sway away.

Michael Holding would always say fast bowling makes you do funny things. Look at how Atkinson got Prabath Jayasuriya out. Bouncer, bouncer, bouncer and then done by a full pitched up delivery, where he got into a horrible position.

Shoaib Akhtar would hit 85mph on a consistent basis then out of nowhere, bowl one at 95mph and deceive you. He broke my finger at Lord’s with that delivery.

Gus Atkinson backed up Wood well but I don’t know anyone who loves playing fast bowling

Milan Rathnayake batted superbly and showed great character to score 72 on his Test debut

Mark Butcher was one player who was magnificent at dealing with short-pitched, fast bowling

I was at the other end when Allan Donald bowled that famous spell to Mike Atherton on an absolutely turgid pitch and Atherton saw him off. You have to show some ticker.

In a tour game at the WACA in Perth, I recall Matt Nicholson hitting Butch right in between the eyes and when I walked out, there was blood on the crease. That’s where you have to show real guts when someone like Butch is getting stretchered off.

For that reason, I admire Rathnayake on debut coming in against that pace with lights on at Old Trafford, one of the bounciest pitches in the country and completely alien to what he would have grown up on.

He got his cap in the morning from Kumar Sangakkara and I reckon Kumar would have been so proud of the character he showed on day one.