Tom Hartley believes his Test tour of India could be a “life changing” experience as he plots a path from international newcomer to England regular.
The Lancashire spinner was a gut-feel selection for the trip, with his high release point, brisk pace and skiddy trajectory trumping a thin first-class record.
Despite losing the series 4-1, Hartley more than justified the call. Ending the series as the second-highest wicket-taker with 22, beaten only by the masterful Ravichandran Ashwin, the left-armer also sent down more overs than any other bowler as Ben Stokes sent him into action on 250 occasions.
There was an unforgettable high in Hyderabad, where his second-innings haul of seven for 62 delivered one England’s greatest ever overseas victories, and the 24-year-old is beginning to adjust his own ambitions as he targets more of the same.
“I know that game will be remembered for a very long time. I think it probably will be life changing,” he told the PA news agency.
“Every so often I’ll see a clip and I’m still surprised. I almost have have to pinch myself like, ‘Wow, that’s what I did!’. The more time passes the more it settles in. My mum went out the day after and bought every paper going, so I’ve got a little folder which will be nice to look back on one day.
“But doing what I did has changed my perspective on what sort of player I can be. I’ve got a long way to go and I can still get a lot better but I know my ceiling has got a lot higher.
“I enjoyed it so much and now I just want to want to keep playing Test cricket. It’s a great environment and a great dressing room to be in. Everyone wants to be part of that and so do I.”
Hartley has already noticed his profile growing as a result of his winter exploits. He made the short journey from Emirates Old Trafford to South Manchester CC to take part in the ECB’s ‘Get Set Weekend’, helping other volunteers prepare the ground for the new season, and found himself the star attraction for a host of aspiring club players.
Hartley was turning out for Ormskirk in the Liverpool and District Premier League as recently as July 2022 and hopes his rapid rise through the ranks can motivate more to make the same journey.
“It was lovely to get down and help out at the club, but it was a bit weird too… so many kids know my name now, everyone there had heard of what I did,” he said.
“What happened to me was so amazing and I hope that is an inspiration to other cricketers out there, it shows things can happen fast if you keep believing. It’s a great story and I hope people see that and keep on going.”
In the short term, Hartley faces a fresh challenge in the form of Nathan Lyon. The Australia great has signed an all-format overseas deal with Lancashire this summer, which could squeeze the Englishman out of the side at the start of the season.
Rather than rail against the competition, he plans to use Lyon’s vast bank of knowledge to his advantage.
“Of course it’s tough to play two spinners but Nathan is someone I really want to learn off,” he said.
“Whatever happens he’s a great mentor and I’m more than happy to watch him bowl for a week or two. The things he does well are the things I want to get better at: he’s so good on flat pitches, he gets lots of over-spin and changes his pace.
“Hopefully he’ll have plenty of tips for me because I’ll be all eyes and ears.”
:: Tom Hartley was talking at the Get Set Weekend, powered by the Cricket Collective, a nationwide ECB initiative to celebrate volunteers across the club game.
Babar's captain's innings leads Pakistan to victory as series drawn with New Zealand
Babar Azam top scored as he led his Pakistan team to a nine-run victory over New Zealand in Lahore that saw the five-game T20I series end in a draw.
Babar hit 69 runs off 44 balls before being bowled by Ben Sears, smashing six fours and two sixes to take his team to 123/3 at the time of his dismissal.
Fakhar Zaman (43 from 33) and Usman Khan (31 off 24) also chipped in with important innings as Pakistan ended on 178/5.
With a target of 179 to secure a 3-1 series victory, New Zealand's run chase faltered almost immediately as opener Tom Blundell was removed within the first over with his team having managed just five runs on the board.
Blundell's fellow opener Tim Seifert steadied the ship with a vital 52-run innings off 33 deliveries before being bowled by Usama Mir, but Shaheen Shah Afridi led the way for Pakistan, finishing with figures of 4-30 to stem the New Zealand run chase
Josh Clarkson's 38 off 26 set up a nervy conclusion, but Pakistan held on to avoid defeat in the T20 series as the teams share the spoils at two wins apiece after the first game was abandoned.
Tape ball programme can help England find unorthodox talent – Richard Gould
The England and Wales Cricket Board hopes to unearth a new seam of talent beyond the game’s traditional league structure with a national tape ball scheme that allows players to thrive without “whites, willow and leather”.
The practice of using a soft ball wrapped in electrical tape to aid swing and variable bounce is a common one in Asia, where it has helped produce express pace bowlers like Haris Rauf, Shaheen Afridi and spinners such as Rashid Khan and Shakib-al-Hasan, but has been slow to enter the mainstream conversation in the United Kingdom.
The Chance to Shine charity has long pioneered tape ball cricket as part of its engagement hubs and now, with the ECB keen to live up to its lofty aspiration of becoming the most inclusive team sport in the country, it is at the heart of a new core cities programme designed to engage ‘diverse communities in urban areas’.
Speaking at a launch event where games were hosted in a warehouse space in Birmingham, ECB chief executive Richard Gould was optimistic about reaching out to those with an interest in cricket but limited access to the pavilions and prepared pitches in the club setup.
“We talk about clubs with picket fences around them. In the past that has been seen as the preserve of the ECB. We’ve missed a complete trick on that,” he said.
“When we talk about the recreational game we’re not just talking about Premier League clubs and village cricket clubs now. We’re talking about all forms of cricket that take place.
“You can play the game anywhere, any time, with anybody, in any environment you want. You don’t have to have whites, willow and leather to do it. You can just pick up a bat and a ball and have some fun.”
As well as fulfilling its remit of reaching out to all comers at a grassroots level, Gould also believes there are benefits to finding cricketers with different styles who have learned the game outside the traditional, private-school heavy pathways.
“Without doubt there are,” he said. “We have to get out and try to find the talent. More to the point, we have to try and find talent in areas that we haven’t normally looked for it.
“I do think county pathways will be looking to make sure they don’t miss out on this talent. It’s just about punching through all of our normal procedures and finding ways to both get people in the game and unearthing that talent which may be unorthodox and great.”
Meg Lanning: Exercise obsession and not enough fuel led to Australia retirement
Former Australia captain Meg Lanning revealed her “obsession” with exercise and not eating enough precipitated her surprise international retirement late last year.
Lanning was at the helm of one of the most dominant eras the sport has ever seen but she missed last year’s Ashes for medical reasons and pulled the plug on her Australia career in November.
She opened up about her hidden health issues on the Howie Games podcast, explaining that running up to 90 kilometres a week coupled with eating two small meals a day led to her dropping from 64kg to 57kg.
View this post on Instagram“I was over-exercising and under-fuelling,” the 32-year-old said. “It wasn’t a physical thing. I’ve always been really physically active and liked that side of it, but it became a bit of an obsession.
“I’d maybe eat a couple of meals a day if I was lucky but they weren’t significant. Initially it didn’t start off as a deliberate thing, it just became a bit of a new normal.
“But it slowly crept into conscious decisions because essentially I felt good.
“I wasn’t getting injured like everybody was telling me I was going to do. It sort of just spiralled and I was in denial, even though everybody kept telling me something wasn’t quite right.
“I was not in a place to be able to go on tour and play cricket and give the commitment levels that were required for that Ashes series, mentally and physically.”
Lanning, who led Australia to five World Cup titles in total and Commonwealth Games glory in 2022, said her struggle was not officially diagnosed as an eating disorder.
“It wasn’t labelled as that but I was exercising a lot and I wasn’t eating enough to fuel that – it was a bit out of whack,” Lanning said.
“It was a bit of control because I felt very out of control with what my future looked like. I felt like I was in control of that and that made me feel better.”
Lanning sought help from medical professionals after also struggling with insomnia and continues to play domestically, while she has been signed for London Spirit for The Hundred this year.
“I dreaded night time because I knew I would go to bed and not be able to sleep,” she said. “That would make me so mad. I would just get more angry with myself. If you can’t sleep, you can’t do anything.
“I feel like I’m in a good spot now. Cricket is still part of what I do. But I wasn’t cut out for the international touring schedule and what came with all of that.”
SportsMax is the Caribbean sports channel of choice, committed to providing sporting content of the highest quality to the Caribbean, delivered by a team of highly innovative, passionate and qualified professionals.
(876) 619-7629
digitalmedia@sportsmax.tv
