“I feel as ready as ever,” says Matthew Revis as he looks ahead to the forthcoming summer with Yorkshire.
The emerging all-rounder has returned to Headingley, via a pre-season tour in Abu Dhabi, from what he describes as a hugely productive winter of grade cricket in Queensland.
Revis, 22, played premier grade cricket for Gold Coast Dolphins and played with and against a number of Australian state and international players.
Matthew Kuhnemann and Xavier Bartlett are just two he shared a dressing room with.
“It was good, really enjoyable,” said Revis. “It’s a bit different to the weather over here, but it’s nice to be back, and I can’t wait for the season to start.
“The quality of cricket was really good and competitive.”
To sum up performances, he said: “I didn’t score as many runs as I wanted to, but I felt in pretty good rhythm with the ball.
“I think I matured a lot more as a player out there than I would have done spending the winter indoors here.
“One of the main reasons for going out there after my appraisals with Gibbo (Ottis Gibson) and Goughie (Darren Gough) at the end of last season was to really get used to bowling and learning about myself as a bowler and how my body works.
“I wanted to see how I’d react when bowling a third spell, say, as opposed to a first spell.
Picture by John Heald. Matthew Revis walks off at Cardiff last season with a maiden first-class five-for to his name.
“We have an unbelievable attack here at Yorkshire, which may mean I don’t get that volume of overs. But bumping up my workloads out there – I bowled 20 overs a week – I got into a position where if I don’t bowl as much here, I can affect more when I do.”
Revis described 2023 as a “breakthrough” summer.
In the Vitality County Championship, he scored 487 runs in 10 matches, including two hundreds, and claimed 15 wickets. Within that, he scored the first two centuries of his first-team career and took his maiden five-wicket haul.
Another highlight was him being Yorkshire’s leading Metro Bank One-Day Cup wicket-taker with 10, including a hat-trick.
“For the two years before that, I’d shown promise,” he said. “But until you get the scores or the wickets, you’re never really there.
“Now, though, I feel like I’ve proved to myself that I belong. It’s now about cementing that, becoming a regular in the team and winning as many games as I can for Yorkshire.”
All aspects of his game are developing nicely – his middle order batting and his seam bowling.
Given he debuted for Yorkshire’s first team at the end of 2019 as a teenaged opening batter, the development of his bowling is particularly interesting.
Last summer, he showed particular versatility – getting wickets conventionally with swing and seam but also earning rewards with some short-pitched aggressive bowling. That was particularly obvious in September’s draw against Glamorgan at Cardiff when he claimed a first-innings 5-50 on the flattest of flat pitches.
And we can expect to see more of the same at stages this summer.
“I worked a bit on that (in Queensland),” he said.
Picture by Allan McKenzie/SWpix.com. Matthew Revis celebrates a hat-trick against Kent last August.
“Out there, I found the pitches changed a lot after the first session, and the Kookaburra ball doesn’t swing much out there anyway.
“My first spell was trying to swing it and nick people off. Then, as the game progressed, it was about finding different ways to get people out, being more adventurous and creative.
“I really enjoyed that challenge. And if that does come into my role here, I will feel better suited to it now than I did when I did it last season.
“If I can affect the game in more ways than one, that’s great. It will hopefully get me into more teams at Yorkshire or even in franchise cricket around the world.
“I’m still trying to work on pitching the ball up and swinging it in the nets, getting people out in more genuine ways. But it’s about finding that balance and playing to the situations.”
As you would expect, Revis loved his time in Australia: “It was a great club to get involved in.
“Off the field was just as good as the on-field stuff. They had four teams full of people my age, so I settled in nicely. And I kept on top of my gym work and running, so I feel as ready as ever for this summer.”
And this summer starts next week with a re-run of last year’s season-opener, against Leicestershire, which the Foxes won last April.
A lot has happened since that fixture, but it’s still clearly fresh in the memories of those involved. Revis was one of them.
“100 percent,” he added. “This game has probably been on our minds since the fixtures came out, wanting a bit of revenge.
Picture by Allan McKenzie/SWpix.com. Matthew Revis acknowledges the applause of the crowd after scoring a century against Derbyshire at Scarborough in September.
“Everyone is looking forward to that first game and throwing the first punch. If we’re serious about getting promotion and winning the league, we need to be throwing the first punch in games and putting teams on the back foot.
“We’re quite a young squad, but we’ve got more experience following last year. Everyone knows their own games and what to expect from this division.
“Someone like Dan Moriarty has come in and settled well. He’s really bought into the group.
“Confidence is high, and we can’t wait for that first game now.”
