When Josh Tongue joined up with England for the first time at the start of this week, he found his name misspelled on some of his shiny new kit.
A product, perhaps, of his late call-up as cover for the injured James Anderson and Ollie Robinson, but an error that most on the outside would deem understandable. Tongue’s a name with which plenty of those arriving at Lord’s on Thursday for the first Test of the summer will have been unfamiliar even 48 hours earlier.
That all changed last night, however, with the announcement that the Worcestershire seamer will make a shock debut against Ireland, a shock mainly because it comes at the expense of Chris Woakes, who had been included ahead in the initial 15-man squad, carried out media duties to preview the game earlier in the day and has an outstanding record at Lord’s, where Tongue has never even played.
There are parallels with the debut handed to Matthew Potts, also then a relative unknown making profit from a spate of injuries, against New Zealand this time last year, but some stark differences, too.
Then, Potts — who, along with Stuart Broad makes up the rest of the seam attack this week — had begun the season on fire, the County Championship’s leading wicket-taker with 35 poles in six games at an average below 19, all under the nose of the new captain Ben Stokes at Durham.
So far this term, Tongue has 11 wickets in four matches (mark one up for being that of Steve Smith) at more than 40, playing for a county that has not had an England international since Moeen Ali.
Crucially, though, England like what they have seen first-hand this week, the seamer impressing with his extra pace and bounce in the nets.
“I was going in with no expectations to be playing at all, and just bowling at high-class players at the nets was good for me,” Tongue said last night. “[Brendon McCullum] came up to me just before training finished. I had just finished a gym session and he came up to me and gave me the good news.”
Tongue was six when he joined Worcestershire (Anderson, for whom he is in part deputising had already played for England, obviously) and broke into the first-team while still a teenager, taking 87 first-class wickets across two Championship seasons either side of an England Lions tour to Australia in the winter of 2017-18, before his progress was stunted by a run of rotten luck with injury.
The 25-year-old’s ascent to international cricketer then, has not come entirely out of the blue, and a sign of the current regime’s interest came this winter, when he was selected for the Lions tour to Sri Lanka just three Championship games after returning from the 15-month lay-off that brought retirement into the conversation until an injection of botox was found to be the unlikely cure for a persistent nerve issue.
“I’m just proud of myself and how I held in there,” Tongue said, having told The Cricketer in January that mashing up dog food had at one stage become a challenge, never mind bowling.
“It’s an amazing feeling. Speechless really, even from when I got the first call up to be in the squad. Now being in the actual team, it’s just a dream come true.”
He is obviously a bit of a rough diamond, we think he has got something really exciting.
With Anderson and Robinson both expected to be ready to face Australia at Edgbaston on June 16, and Mark Wood already fit but being wrapped in cotton wool, Tongue remains an outside bet to keep his place beyond this week.
Even so, his selection shows the value Stokes and McCullum have put on a point of difference in their attack, even with plans to rotate a battery of 90mph-plus bowlers left in tatters by injuries to Jofra Archer, Olly Stone and the uncapped Brydon Carse.
“He’s a big, strong lad, that’s for sure,” McCullum said on Monday. “He looks like he bowls quite fast and has some real skills. He is obviously a bit of a rough diamond. We think he has got something really exciting.”
Even then, though, the head coach gave no suggestion a debut was imminent.
“Whether he plays in this Test or throughout the summer, I am not sure, but again he is another one who looks like he has an immense amount of talent,” he added.
Tomorrow, unexpectedly, Tongue will have chance to show it.
