Why Hong Kong fencing ace Ryan Choi can take Djokovic inspiration amid technique tweak

He is by every measure England’s greatest bowler, but even James Anderson was reduced to mediocrity after an abortive attempt to remodel his action.

The owner of 704 Test wickets, Anderson spent most of his country’s 2004-05 tour of South Africa out of form and out of favour, and dejectedly bowling at single stumps on practice strips as he tried to relocate the pace and swing that had characterised his progressive initial years in international cricket.

Ironically, it was a stress fracture of the back, precisely the issue his new action was supposed to prevent, that persuaded Anderson to return to the tried-and-tested method that would allow him to become one of the finest bowlers cricket has seen.

For Anderson’s idiosyncratic dip of the head at the point of delivery, read Ryan Choi Chun-yin’s “leap, crouch and charge forward”, the tenet of the explosive and “crazy” technique that underpinned the Hongkonger’s ascent to the top of the fencing world last year.

The 2025 Asian and world champion, Choi has latterly been bedevilled by a left hamstring complaint that has required him to trade his combative style for an unfamiliar pragmatic approach.

At the recent Kerry World Fencing Championships in Hong Kong, Choi competed with a “five-to-10-per-cent tear in my muscle”.

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