Matthew Potts enjoyed a brilliant breakout summer for England this year, picking up 20 Test match wickets at an average of 28.00 in five appearances against New Zealand, India and South Africa.
Potts' displays have earned him an England contract, with the 23-year-old awarded an incremental deal for the upcoming year. And the seamer has opened up about what has been a meteoric rise in a video produced by Vertu Motors.
"My ambition has always been to play for England," Potts said. "But being a youngster, you look up at these guys playing cricket on the TV and you're like, 'this is what I want to do'.
"There was a hill round the back of my Grandad's house and we used to go up there with a set of homemade wooden stumps. Originally, it was a cat basket and I would just knock them about in the field all day long.
"I was pretty good at it, so my Mum and Dad and Grandad made the decision to start taking me to the cricket. That was at Philadelphia [Cricket Club], and I played at Philadelphia until I was 13, and then I made the transition to Washington Cricket Club."
He made his first-class debut for Durham in 2017 and has cemented himself as a key member of their attack, working hard to improve his game with Neil Killeen who has been the club's bowling coach since 2010.
"He burst onto the scene as if he had played 100 test matches," Killeen said of Potts. "At that point, he loved to tell everyone how to bat, how to bowl, how to field. He's gone on from there and he’s still that same bullish character now. But a lot of that is what has got him to where he is today."
After a brilliant start to this year's County Championship season, injuries to several frontline seamers meant Potts was handed a Test debut against New Zealand at Lord's, with his Durham teammate and new Test skipper Ben Stokes helping him make an almost seamless step up to international cricket..
"Getting picked for England was the best feeling in the world," he added. "Obviously, it was something I've been working so hard towards. I was over the moon and I couldn't put it into words.
"For my debut, I found out the day before. Stokesy rang me and said 'Can you come downstairs for a sec?', and he was like 'Are you ready to be a test cricketer?'. And I was like 'Abso-bloody-lutely'
"I remember going off with cramp nine overs in on the first day, and I didn't know what was going wrong. I was like 'Why is my body giving up on me now of all points [in my career]?'.
"Obviously it was the nerves underneath. So walking off with cramp sitting on four wickets, with the potential of going on the Lord's Honours Board, I was disappointed not to get five, but there'll be plenty more opportunities to be on that Lord's Honours Board."
