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March 2022 in Bridgetown, Barbados. England’s men Test team were, unbeknownst to them, on the cusp of a new era.
Matthew Fisher, an exciting 24-year-old fast bowler whose talent had drawn admiring glances since his professional debut aged 15, had finally grown into his body and clutched a shiny new ball in his right hand on debut.
A strong finish to the 2021 English domestic summer when, having recovered from injury, he took 18 wickets at 17.5 runs apiece in 100 overs across Yorkshire’s final four Division One games, saw Fisher Australia-bound with the Lions. He impressed enough to be named in the Test squad for the West Indies trip. That tour. The one when James Anderson and Stuart Broad were left at home.
Heir apparent, Fisher was economical and took the wicket of John Campbell. It was his shirt to lose, and a strong start domestically would surely have seen him retained if not in the XI, then at least in the squad for New Zealand’s visit to Lord’s in June.
Then everything changed.
A few months before Chat GPT entered the world’s consciousness, ‘Bazball’ did. The Brendon McCullum-Ben Stokes axis formed, Broad and Anderson were reinstated, and one win in 17 Tests became two in 18.
Matthew Fisher bowling in the West Indies on the 2022 tour (Gareth Copley/Getty Images)
Fisher played for Yorkshire in the County Championship against Gloucestershire in April 2022 but suffered a back injury. Sidelined initially for four weeks, he did not reappear until September.
In the meantime, Matthew Potts and Jamie Overton debuted for the national side, and thereafter a slew of seamers seemingly overtook him: Josh Tongue, Gus Atkinson, Josh Hull, Brydon Carse, even Sam Cook. Fisher remained relatively fit, making 16 red-ball appearances across 2023 (28 wickets at 28.53) and 2024 (27 wickets at 22.25). A move to Surrey ahead of 2025 brought 31 wickets in 11 outings last summer.
And now, perhaps again unknowingly at the end of another England era, the 28-year-old is back in the frame to gain a second cap. With Mark Wood ruled out of the Ashes, Fisher, already in the country with the Lions, is in the squad for the last three matches.
Thrown to the Australian wolves, or has his time finally come?
Like many in his generation, Fisher fell for cricket in 2005. Fixated by Simon Hughes’ back-of-a-van analysis, he watched on in awe as fellow Yorkshireman Michael Vaughan led England to Ashes glory — what a concept, eh?
However, he also found love far closer to home.
Sheriff Hutton Bridge, his family’s club side, made the National Village Cup final at Lord’s. Brother Adam, nine years his senior, was in the XI.
With the team travelling to London on the Saturday, the Bridge were short that weekend and Matthew, aged seven, played alongside his dad. “Dad wasn’t a cricketer,” explains Adam. “He was actually colour blind and couldn’t see between red and green, which wasn’t ideal. But he loved his sport.”
The younger Fisher had started playing a year previously, competing — or at least attempting to compete — with Adam, and middle brother Mark. It was the classic ‘tape around a tennis ball and into the back garden’ scenario.
“Matty was always talented,” Adam says. “But I think the talent that was most obvious was his competitiveness. He did not like losing. Given the nine years between me and him, and the five between him and Mark, he lost quite a bit.”
Aged six, Fisher had tried out for Bridge’s under-11s but was rejected by the club chairman as he chucked the ball rather than bowled it. “He went away, worked out what to do — we didn’t coach him or anything — and came back the following year saying, ‘Now I want to play’,” Adam recalls. “They couldn’t stop him then.”
Adam also remembers Fisher’s under-11s debut. “Matty was batting and at the end of the over went to have a chat with the other batter, which we found hilarious because no other kid did… What are you going to talk about at that age? They just waited for the change of ends.
“The drama was that Matty then sent the other kid to the other end. He swapped ends between overs so he could face the next ball. We were like, ‘What seven-year-old is thinking about basically cheating to get to the other end?’. We were cringing on the sidelines. You can’t do that… but he did.”
Fisher barely looked back after that, constantly playing an age group or three above his peers.
At 13, he lined up for Yorkshire’s Academy in the Yorkshire Premier League. When named in the Yorkshire XI for a domestic 40-over game against Leicestershire in June 2013, he was just 15 years and 212 days old. He became the youngest player to feature in a professional county game in the post-war era and took 1-40.
Ex-Australian Test quick and then Yorkshire head coach Jason Gillespie assures The Athletic that Fisher’s selection was carefully considered and merit-based. “He’d done really well for the second XI and we needed a bowler for the first XI,” says Gillespie. Five days previously, Fisher had taken 6-25 for the second XI. “We all agreed he deserved the opportunity, and he was the next bowler ready to go. He certainly didn’t disappoint.”
Fisher made his England Under-19 debut that summer, finishing a tri-series against Pakistan and Bangladesh with 10 wickets at 21.5. In February 2014, shortly after turning 16, he went to the Under-19 World Cup. England lost the third-place play-off to Australia, but Fisher claimed 10 wickets at 19.7, including figures of 10-3-21-2 in the semi-final.
Matthew Fisher trains with England’s Under-19s in August 2013 (Matthew Lewis/Getty Images)
In 2015, Fisher made his first-class debut at Trent Bridge. He played three matches that summer, taking five wickets, as Yorkshire defended the title they had won the previous year.
Amongst his bowling team-mates were England internationals Tim Bresnan, Liam Plunkett and Ryan Sidebottom. By then, two operations on his left ear to remove a cholesteatoma — an abnormal skin growth — had left him partially deaf.
“He loved it,” recalls Gillespie of Fisher’s time as part of a bowling unit that also included experienced county bowlers Steven Patterson and Jack Brooks. “It was a great environment for him to learn and develop. These were guys he looked up to. They were heroes of his, and then he’s sharing a dressing room with them.
“They couldn’t have been more supportive of young Fish. He fitted in really nicely and, when called upon, performed quite strongly.”
But, since then, injuries have consistently frustrated Fisher’s attempts to kick on. You name it, Fisher has had it. Three tears in his left hamstring meant he missed the entire 2016 summer. There have been shoulder dislocations, thumb fractures, side strains.
In 2021, he suffered a recurrence of a back injury while driving, a journey that ended with him in tears on the phone to his mum. “It’s been super tough,” Adam says. “Just seeing what you have to go through as an injured sportsman. His trajectory was pretty obvious and we were thinking, ‘God, he’s going to go and do everything here, isn’t he?’.
“He’d never had an injury until he was 15, and then all of a sudden it just started hitting him. Some were really unlucky. Others just happened naturally. I think it really knocked him and has been the biggest challenge.
“But I would say that, with Matthew, the easy story is the injuries. That’s what you’ll see all over. However, knowing him and knowing the background, he has reached an elite standard in what he does. Imagine doing your job that little throughout 10 years and still being at such a high level? Kudos to him for where his skill levels are.
“We’ve always just said, ‘We hope it changes for you at some point, and you get the opportunity to show what you are really about’.”
Matthew Fisher bowling on his England debut against the West Indies in Barbados (Randy Brooks/AFP via Getty Images)
The first such opportunity came in 2022.
Fisher found out he was playing that Barbados Test about an hour and a half before the toss. Craig Overton had fallen ill and Fisher was in. Fellow Yorkshireman Joe Root presented him with his cap, and he snared what is to date his only Test wicket with just his second ball. His appearance earned the family a significant windfall: they had previously put a bet on him playing for England.
Not present to witness that match, though, was Fisher’s father, Phil, who passed away having battled bowel cancer when Fisher was just 14. “Dad and Matty were super close,” Adam explains. “They’d spend hours and hours, days even, together in the car travelling to games. They were really tight.
“Matty had been playing for Yorkshire Academy and it was clear that he was doing really well, but obviously Dad would be super proud of where he’s come, and the grit he’s shown through adversity. It’s a real shame that Dad did not manage to see it, but you don’t control the amount of time you’re on the planet.”
Barbados was Phil’s favourite place, and he’d twice previously taken the Bridge on tour there. It was fitting.
Matthew Fisher talks to Mark Wood, the man he has replaced in the Ashes party, in Antigua in March 2022 (Gareth Copley/Getty Images)
But then, with a clear path ahead, a stress fracture to his back blocked the road like a felled tree.
During his protracted time off, Fisher looked at preventative measures, learning to straighten his back foot contact so that, as he landed, his toes pointed towards fine leg. That has helped remove the strain on his left side.
His recovery also included a concerted effort to bulk up. He had looked at the likes of Pat Cummins, Josh Hazlewood and Mitchell Starc and wanted a comparable frame. He added 5kg of muscle ahead of the 2023 summer. Worth it? Well, 30 of Fisher’s 56 first-class games have come since the start of that season.
Surrey’s call is very difficult for any cricketer to reject and, in October 2024, some 4,139 days after his professional debut, a then 26-year-old Fisher was confirmed to be Oval-bound.
Fisher’s home county had announced a few months previously that he would be departing, but rather than down spikes, Fisher took 18 wickets in the final three County Championship games to secure promotion back to Division One.
Yorkshire had been slow to offer a new contract and Alec Stewart had pounced. It was one of the last pieces of business then outgoing director of cricket Stewart — he has since returned to Surrey on a full-time basis — completed. Stewart had visited Fisher’s school a decade earlier as part of sponsorship commitments and had kept tabs on him since.
However, later that month, Fisher’s England Development contract was not renewed, with John Turner, Hull, Tongue, Potts and Olly Stone all seemingly having superseded him. It was a kick, but Fisher had returned to his feet plenty of times before.
Matthew Fisher in Surrey colours (Ben Hoskins/Getty Images for Surrey CCC)
“I’m not going to sit here and say we’ve created this wonderful bowler called Matt Fisher,” says Surrey head coach Gareth Batty after Fisher’s recent call into the Test squad. “We identified a very fine skill set with a young lad who had an ability to hit an area that challenges the batters, had a robust and repeatable action, but who had, by his own admission, struggled with injuries and with stringing games together.
“Everything was there. It was just a question of how to fit the jigsaw pieces together.”
Surrey asked Fisher about his aspirations and his response was simple: he wanted to play for England. Surrey’s depth meant they could assure him he would not be bowled into the ground and, despite Fisher’s injury history restricting him to just 105 Yorkshire appearances in 12 summers across all formats, they did not view his signing as risky.
“When you’ve got a young lad who’s desperate to play,” Batty says, “somebody who is prepared to grab their career, make a change and come to what is not traditionally a bowler’s ground in the Oval, that tells you all you need to know about the lad and his mindset.”
One of Surrey’s advantages is its marquee that hosts outdoor nets from the end of January. To be on grass so early is a dream for a quick bowler. Then there is the fact that they are at the forefront of technology.
They have liaised with top-level football clubs to drill deeper into the use of GPS data to keep players’ physical bandwidth. Bowling workloads are managed carefully with very few “flat out, impact” training sessions. “We don’t believe that you need to always be going at maximal output,” Batty explains. “We steal that from baseball. Pitchers don’t throw in practice at their max, but they do lots of practice throwing to get good depth and strength into their body and their physicality and movement.
“We try to get more overs than most (other counties) in at 70 to 80 per cent through what we would call ‘technical drill sessions’. These get the body more robust.”
It has worked for Fisher, who played more red ball games than ever last summer. Even so, Batty admits he was “a fraction surprised” that Fisher even made the Lions squad this winter, “purely because the lad himself wasn’t expecting to be in”.
Matthew Fisher bowling for the Lions against England at Lilac Hill Park in Perth last month (Philip Brown/Getty Images)
To date, Fisher has 175 red-ball wickets at 28.16, a record similar to that of Atkinson. Batty has seen the latter flourish at the highest level. Could Fisher be next?
“Watching somebody on the training ground is a totally different animal to seeing them in a game,” Batty responds. “But what I would say is, if you had a list of things that you need to tick off to give yourself the best chance, he certainly ticks all of them.
“He’s the right sort of lad. He’s prepared to keep going to the well. His skill set is very, very good. You never know how that stands up against the best of the best until you’ve given it a go. Has he done enough to be in that conversation? Absolutely.
“I would say that about lots of players, but it’s ‘right place, right time’. This is his right place, right time, and it’s very good timing for him.”
Matthew Fisher was a surprise inclusion in the Lions squad (Gareth Copley/Getty Images)
Wherever Fisher lands, whether internationally or domestically, the Bridge will always remain his home — a safe cricketing haven.
He has played only twice since 2019, but several times last summer, he spent spare Saturdays travelling home to watch. Occasionally, he would help former England player and head coach David ‘Bumble’ Lloyd carry the drinks on. Previously, while at Yorkshire, Fisher drove across from Leeds to stand at slip as a substitute fielder for the Bridge.
Should he make a second Test appearance in the coming weeks, there will be a strong Bridge presence at the ground.
Adam, who is joint director of cricket, is already in Australia with his young family, while his mum is en route. Several club members are also dotted around the country, and the news of Fisher’s call-up sent the team’s WhatsApp group into overdrive.
Stevan Savkovic, a 55-year-old fourth XI player who recently made his international debut for Serbia in a T20 against Cyprus, had a simple message for Fisher: “From one international to another, good luck!”
A little bit of that could take Fisher a long way.