bowler

Wood has been plagued by injuries during his career – including multiple knee and elbow operations – which have robbed England for periods of one of their finest strike bowlers.

He spent seven months rehabilitating his knee in order to be fit for the Ashes and lamented not being able to play some games for his county before heading to Australia for the series.

“I tried to get back at certain points but my knee wasn’t quite ready,” he said.

“It’s easy in hindsight, even if I was at 80% then at least the game would have given us an indicator of where I was.”

He was thought to have been close to a return in the home summer, but ultimately did not take the field until England’s only Ashes warm-up game against the Lions at Lilac Hill in November.

He bowled eight overs but was only cleared to play in the first Test following a hamstring scan.

For now, although focused on his recovery, Wood said he has been thinking about life after cricket: “I’ve started thinking about other things, doing podcasts, doing my coaching badges.

“I’ve now started to try and think for the first time about what I should do if this doesn’t go well.”

Wood – regarded as one of the fastest bowlers to play for England – has taken 119 wickets in 38 Tests since making his debut in 2015.

He was part of the 2015 Ashes-winning side, lifted the 2019 50-over World Cup and won the T20 World Cup in 2022.

Randall took the first wicket of his five in a row at the end of his second over before taking the rest from the start of his third over as Northern Districts slumped from 4-0 to 9-5.

The right-arm medium pacer had figures of 5-2 at that point and also took a wicket with the first ball of his third over to make it six wickets in eight balls.

He dismissed another batter with the fifth ball of his third over and finished with figures of 7-25.

“It gets drummed into us a lot that we don’t want to go searching for wickets, so I was trying to just keep bowling the same ball, and our ‘Plan A’ that we’d talked about, and it came off,” said Randall.

“I had no idea that it was the first time it [five wicket in five balls in first-class cricket] had happened in the world, it’s seriously cool.

“I mean, I don’t really have any words at the moment, to be honest. I’ll take it.”

While it is the first time a player has achieved the feat in first-class cricket, it is not the first time a player has taken five wickets in five balls in all formats.

Ireland international Curtis Campher became the first male player to do so in a professional match in July 2025 in a domestic T20 game.

Zimbabwe Women all-rounder Kelis Ndhlovu previously took five wickets in five balls in a domestic under-19 T20 in 2024.