“He was just like, ‘are you still tweaking a few out? What’s the situation?’ And I said, ‘I’m ready to go. Chuck me the ball,'” Walter recalls. “I hadn’t really bowled for two or three years before that and I’d only really just got to being bowlable. But the first time Jos threw me the ball I did well and then I got a roll.”
“When I was younger I came through as a bowler, and I went on the ECB pace programme which was a lot of technical work. But then I had injuries around that time and when I was coming back, I struggled with nailing what technique to use and then just fell away. I lost loads of pace and struggled to get the ball to do what I wanted it to do. I’d just lost confidence with it, really.”
Walter’s improvement with the bat kept him in the Essex side across formats but he only bowled sporadically. “I just needed to figure out exactly how my body works. I’m a big guy, so it’s not always as easy as going by the textbook: I have to feel things through. It was almost like taking a break gave my body a chance to forget the technical stuff and just run in and bowl how I wanted to, rather than worrying about what was going where.”
Walter’s performances in the Hundred across two seasons piqued the interest of Charles Evans, Brisbane Heat’s analyst, before September’s BBL draft and he has thrived over the last six weeks. “I think we’ve got the best bowling unit in the competition,” he says. “I feel like I complement the rest of the attack quite well and we’ve been good at managing games.”
“I’ve worked a lot on my defensive bowling, trying to figure out how to get batters off strike and trying to keep the ball away from the shorter pockets”
“I’ve worked a lot on my defensive bowling, trying to figure out how to get batters off strike and trying to keep the ball away from the shorter pockets. I normally bowl the overs where the right-handers are hitting to the short leg side, so I’ve had to get quite clever with getting them to hit to the other side of the ground. I do a lot of work off the field figuring out what I’m going to do in different situations.”
Walter has performed his trademark aeroplane celebration after each of his 13 wickets and has been a hit with the Heat’s fans. “It was Eoin Morgan who started calling me ‘Tall Paul’ on Sky in the Hundred but it’s taken on a new level out here,” he laughs. “I’m not complaining: if everyone’s shouting that at me on the streets instead of abuse then I’ll take it.”
Walter hopes to return to the BBL next year, not least because he got engaged shortly before Christmas to his Australian partner, who is based in Melbourne: “It’s been a busy few months. This is definitely the best competition for my life as a whole, so I’m glad it’s all gone well.” A trophy next week would top it off.