It is the most searched question in junior fast bowling and almost nobody will answer it, because answering it in public gets you into trouble.

So here is a straight answer, with the caveats where they belong rather than in place of the number.

The numbers, roughly

For a 14-year-old in this country who bowls seam and is considered quick for their age group, you are typically looking at somewhere in the 55–65mph range. A genuinely fast 14-year-old, the one who makes a district squad and gets talked about, is often around 65–70mph. Above that at fourteen is rare and usually means an unusually early physical maturer.

The average club 14-year-old who bowls seam is slower than parents expect — frequently in the 45–55mph band. That is not a problem. It is normal, and on its own it says very little about what that bowler will be at twenty.

Now the important part.

Why the number is nearly worthless on its own

Two 14-year-olds bowl 58mph. One is 5ft 2in, has not started his growth spurt, and generates that speed from a sound, well-sequenced action. The other is 6ft, has a fifteen-inch height advantage in leverage, and bowls 58mph by hauling on his arm with a body that leaks power sideways.

The first one is a far better fast bowling prospect and the scoreboard of the speed gun cannot tell you that.

This is why we do not select on speed at fourteen and neither should anyone else. Speed at that age is mostly a report on physical maturity — height, weight, limb length, how far through puberty a child is. Those things arrive on their own timetable and they arrive for everybody eventually. What does not arrive on its own is a bowling action that can use them.

The bowler you want to back is the one whose action is already sound and who has not yet grown. Every inch of height and every kilo of usable strength that arrives over the next four years will convert into pace, because the mechanics are there to receive it.

The bowler with a fault in the action gets the same growth and converts far less of it. And if the fault is the wrong one — the trunk collapsing sideways at release — the extra size makes the injury risk worse rather than better.

What we actually look for at fourteen

When we watch a 14-year-old on video, the speed gun is not the first thing we consult. We look at whether the action stacks in the right order.

Does the base hold? Back foot landing light rather than stamping, bodyweight carrying forward rather than sitting back, feet hip-width apart rather than crossing over.

Is there separation? The lower half arriving first with the upper half delayed behind it. That delay is where pace is stored. A 14-year-old with good separation and no height yet is a bowler with a bank account.

Does it go down the pitch? Head and chest driving at the target through release, not falling away to the side.

Does the arm come last? Base firms, hips drive, chest follows, arm last. If the arm is leading the chain, the bowler is bowling with roughly a third of the body they own.

A bowler who ticks those boxes at 58mph and 5ft 2in is in a considerably better position than one bowling 68mph the wrong way.

The trap the number sets

Here is the practical harm the question does.

A 14-year-old finds out they are bowling 52mph and that somebody in the next district is bowling 65. The reaction is entirely predictable: try harder. And trying harder, for almost every young bowler, means pulling harder with the bowling arm, because that is the part they can feel.

Pulling harder with the arm does not produce meaningful pace — the arm is the last and smallest link in a chain that starts at the feet. What it does produce is effort, frustration, and in the worst cases a body that starts contorting to find speed it cannot generate properly. That is how a mechanical fault gets baked in at exactly the age when a child is growing fastest and the spine is least able to cope with asymmetric load.

Chasing a number at fourteen is how bowlers get slower and get hurt.

So what should a parent do with the number?

Use it as a baseline, not a grade. Record it once, write it down, and then stop talking about it for six months. What matters is the direction of travel over years, alongside an action that is getting cleaner rather than more strained.

And if you want to know whether a 14-year-old’s 55mph is the good kind or the expensive kind, that is a question a video answers and a speed gun cannot. Film two deliveries from behind at stump height and two from side-on, and either look at them properly yourself or have somebody who does this for a living look at them.

We would far rather tell a parent their child’s action is sound and the pace will come than meet the same bowler at seventeen with three years of compensation to undo.

Ian Pont is Director of Cricket at the National Fast Bowling Academy and has coached fast bowlers at international level.