The Liam Norwell story: A journey of rank bad luck, déjà vu and defiance

NICK FRIEND: Between the summers of 2018 and 2020, Norwell completed four games, leaving two more prematurely with hamstring injuries. In 2021, though, he was key in Warwickshire's red-ball double and has been rewarded with England Lions selection

Good things come to those who wait, and Liam Norwell had waited long enough. Not for the England Lions call-up that has come as a heartening surprise but for a summer free of injury, for a chance to work out just how good he is.

There can’t be many cricketers basking in a state of happiness quite like this: Norwell is a county champion, Bob Willis Trophy winner, father to a young son, husband to a pregnant wife and about to embark on the voyage of a lifetime. The Cricketer was warned by his agent beforehand that this is how it would be, that Norwell – a 29-year-old who has trodden the domestic circuit without previous recognition or higher honours – is the kind of guy for whom you’d quickly find yourself rooting.

“I’ve never had an opportunity like this in 10 or 11 years of playing,” he says, “so I just have to throw everything I’ve got at it and see if I can impress the people out there.”

After 54 first-class wickets in 2021 at 17.85 apiece, he is off to Australia, part of a Lions group assembled principally as backup and support to the main Ashes squad. He laughs at that thought: Liam Norwell in the Ashes. He had never even considered getting this close to the international game until Paul Farbrace, Warwickshire’s director of cricket, pulled him to one side during the lunch interval at Lord’s in the final throes of September to let him know his name was up for consideration.

Lancashire were 57 for 8 and Warwickshire primed for a red-ball double, but Norwell could have been forgiven if he had struggled to give the Bob Willis Trophy his full attention thereafter. He called his wife immediately who insisted that he accept the offer if selected, her pregnancy and their young son notwithstanding. “There’s no need to worry about me,” she told him. “Of course you’re going.”

This interview took place long enough after the announcement was made that, for many, it would probably have sunk in by now. But Norwell talks about this career-high like a child talks about Christmas. Even arriving at Loughborough to train with his new teammates has been a thrill: “It was quite strange – they’re people that you’ve watched on TV. All the first-team boys were training, and you know that in two weeks’ time you’re going to be living with them. Whereas I’ve never in 10 years even been on a pace programme or a bowling camp. Everyone is so welcoming, so you do fit straight in. I wouldn’t say that I feel like an outsider, but it’s a bit like the first day of school.”

Norwell is one of four players in the travelling party without previous Lions experience. And while it remains incredibly unlikely that the cards will fall in his favour to win a Test cap this winter, you can imagine the unabashed zeal with which he would approach that particular assignment.

Any professional cricketer would be chuffed to be in this situation, but not all of them have tackled the same adversity along the way. Norwell and David Payne were born in the same year and made their first-class debuts for Gloucestershire in the same game: only, Payne has played 23 more games – that’s one-and-a-half seasons where he was fit and Norwell wasn’t.

^{Liam Norwell claimed 54 first-class wickets in 2021 to earn his place in the England Lions squad}

“It has been quite a journey just to get to this place,” he reflects. “If this is the only taste I ever get of it, then there’s no better place to go than to help prepare the team for an Ashes series. I just have to go and give it everything that I’ve got and hope that it’s not a one-time thing. I’ve always backed my ability. But since I turned pro, I’ve never really had a sniff.

“Hopefully, I can get another Lions tour. If there are injuries or I do well, I might be able to push my case further down the line for a place in the playing squad. But this is the most I’ve had, so I’m just going to enjoy it.”

The floods of messages that came Norwell’s way were proof of a roundly popular selection. It’s not often that a solid county pro of his age is handed a breakthrough like this; the Lions has historically been a breeding ground for the next generation, but his inclusion – and that of 28-year-old Alex Lees, he points out – feel like an important step in promoting a pathway for performances as well as potential. In a squad of bright young talent, Norwell seems like its least paraded member. There is no particular mystery nor exceptionalism to his art, but none of that means he doesn’t merit this moment: “I think my record probably compares with most people in the country who are doing well.”

He admits to being “overwhelmed” by the aftermath of his call-up, with slices of goodwill flying in indiscriminately: from Cornwall, where he grew up, to his former colleagues at Gloucestershire, where he spent his entire professional career until leaving for Warwickshire in search of this very outcome.

That move was never a slight on his old club, but rather a desperation to challenge himself in Division One – against better batters, on better pitches. “I didn’t want to never know if I was good enough to do that,” he explains. Back then, pitches at Bristol were slow and low; Gloucestershire had been marooned in the second tier since 2006. He chose Edgbaston. There are certainly quicker bowlers on the circuit – Saqib Mahmood and Brydon Carse comfortably so in the Lions squad alone – but Norwell, who styles himself similarly to Craig Overton, has a happy knack of taking wickets, a skill he has retained at Warwickshire, even at a ground hardly famed for being one of county cricket’s green tops. “My stats are pretty decent. I just seem to take wickets when I play.” He has 72 at 19.70 for Warwickshire, 248 at 26.97 for Gloucestershire.

“I made it clear to Gloucestershire that it was never about me thinking I was too good for this or thinking that I should be playing for England or that I could be earning more money.

“I was leaving to better myself to see if I could be successful on flatter, tougher surfaces. It’s probably the pitches I’m playing on as much as the wickets I’ve taken that have got me noticed.”

^{Norwell has been hindered by regular injuries throughout his career}

Graeme Welch, his bowling coach at Warwickshire, has worked with England in the last 18 months; Farbrace was Trevor Bayliss’ assistant during his tenure; Mark Robinson, the head coach, has won wherever he has been. They have taught Norwell how much emphasis the national setup places on the ability to extract bounce and life in docile conditions.

“I think that’s been the biggest thing,” he believes. “I’m probably bowling half a yard quicker than when I was at Gloucester – maybe even more than that. That’s probably through getting my action technically a bit more sound, but also because you have to put a lot into these pitches to get something out of them.”

But more than anything, Norwell has found himself in contention because of a change in fortune. Across three summers between 2018 and 2020, he completed four games, leaving two more prematurely with hamstring injuries. 

“My aim for this season was just to be fit to play,” he says. “And then, if I’m fit, then hopefully I’ll make a difference on the pitch. I didn’t think I’d get quite those numbers, but because I didn’t really think too far beyond that, I never really got ahead of myself. I was just thinking: ‘Just make sure you’re on the pitch, make sure you’re on the pitch, make sure you’re on the pitch.’”

Ahead of a pre-season game against Durham in the final week of March, he felt “more nervous than before my first-class debut”.

He explains: “It had been that long without being able to trust my body that I’d be ready to play a whole season.

“But Mark Robinson just said: ‘Relax, you know you’ve got it in you. Back yourself and everything will take care of itself.’ I think moments like that were why we were successful this year – Robbo always knew the right thing to say.”

We first spoke last year ahead of the truncated summer as part of a piece about the challenges facing seamers coming back to bowling after a lengthy lockdown. In Norwell’s case, he was returning for the first time since a muscle tear in June 2019. As fate would have it, he suffered a back spasm the day after our conversation that restricted him to just a single appearance in 2020. Doctors put it down to spending lockdown chasing a crawling toddler through the house. “But that’s not something I’d want to change because I loved those months watching my little boy growing up,” he adds. “Although I missed cricket, which was not ideal, I got some quality family time, which I’d never properly had.”

^{Norwell began his professional career at Gloucestershire before joining Warwickshire}

Really, this is the Liam Norwell story: a journey of rank bad luck, déjà vu and defiance. To carry on going to the well in those circumstances is no mean feat. He was trapped in a vicious circle, where each hamstring injury was followed by another – they were “the toughest to take” – with a stress fracture slipped in for good measure. That the surgeon deemed none of them to be interlinked merely highlighted the misfortune of the hand he’d been dealt.

He tore it twice in 2018, ending his Gloucestershire career in the process, having been fit to bowl just 54 balls all year. “That wasn’t how I wanted to leave the club.” Then, he claimed a seven-wicket haul on his Warwickshire debut against Somerset but only lasted two more games before his hamstring gave way again in his fourth first-class match for the club.

He pauses for a moment: “Actually, that one was probably the toughest to take. I’d done all the hard yards, I felt fit, I’d started well at Warwickshire but then had a freak one where I tore it in a completely different area.”

Since then, he has remained in one piece; Norwell references his wife on several occasions, but also the work of Gerhard Mostert, Warwickshire’s head physio, strength and conditioning lead Jack Mirfin and physio Chris Cole. “It’s those three guys who I have a lot to thank for,” he says. “They put a lot of effort into me.”

So much so that Warwickshire hardly had to manage his body through 2021: he featured in 13 of 15 first-class fixtures and bowled more red-ball deliveries than in all but two of an 11-year career. It was agreed that he would sit out for the Royal London Cup, but even that was partly down to a desire to afford opportunities elsewhere. Mainly, though, he was rested through that period because Warwickshire knew they had a title to win by the time the 50-over competition began. That is the level of his importance, even if a Lions call-up at that point remained fanciful.

The key, interestingly, has been the relationship between protecting his body and maintaining his bowling loads in the off-season. It might seem antithetical in the context of modern sport science, but Norwell has often been at his best and fittest when running in regularly through the winter. He was bowling 30 overs per week from the end of January to rebuild his tolerance after so long away and bowling almost daily at Warwickshire openers Rob Yates and Will Rhodes from around the same time.

^{Norwell played a key role in Warwickshire's red-ball double in 2021}

To a degree, he chuckles, all this makes him quite a youthful 29-year-old. Returning to Payne, his former teammate, Norwell has bowled almost 7,000 fewer deliveries across his career in all formats. “I know I’m behind where I could be,” he says. “And I hope those games and those overs are still in me. Hopefully, if I can have a good run now of staying fit, we seem to have a good method.

“When you’ve had a lot of injuries like I have, you know that it takes a toll on your body. You have mornings where you feel a bit sore. But if we can get that nailed down, then there’s no reason why I can’t have an extended period now towards the end of my career, having bowled less than I’d have liked to up to this point.”

Having waited this long, you’d be cruel to wish him anything other than the very best.

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