“I don’t have much time for cold weather,” says Reece Topley, explaining his movements over the past few months. Topley was one of the few players to emerge from England’s World Cup with reputation enhanced, though his tournament ended prematurely when he broke a finger fielding in the group-stage defeat by South Africa. The prospect of returning to chilly England while the digit healed held little appeal so instead he headed to California, spending a month there before joining a new-look white-ball squad in the Caribbean.
“I had a house in Los Angeles for four weeks, and just ran, ate, drank coffee – you know, the normal rubbish I’d do in London,” the 29-year-old says. “I love being in California. I find it very pretty, it’s a perfect temperature at this time of year. I’ll be honest, I’m quite boring.
“I was just over there doing the same things I’d do at home, just the weather was a bit nicer, and people were smiling a little bit more than they do on the tube. I’ve done it often. I went out for a few months when I had a stress fracture one time. I just really enjoy it there. It’s a slightly more outdoorsy way of life, and I just find everyone’s very friendly.”
Those at the highest level of white-ball cricket spend much of their time on the move, hopping from this bilateral series to that franchise tournament. For Topley even this is not enough travel, not enough time away. “It’s the best to be honest,” he says. “I’m in my 20s, there’s only a certain time in your life that you can do it. So I almost want to squeeze everything out of it that I can. I don’t want to look back and think: ‘I could have done this.’
“I love being away, I love experiencing new places. Cricket’s an amazing way to see the world but then also the time between tours I like to detour via somewhere on the way to the next place. I think it’s a great way to travel.”
Topley had also been ruled out of the 2022 T20 World Cup because of a freak injury, and similarly forced from the Indian Premier League this year, a run of luck that would prompt a bout of morose introspection in all but the cheeriest soul – and probably contributed to him getting only a one-year central contract – but he remains as sunny as the California climate.
“I don’t think anything’s going to be achieved from sitting around and dwelling on things or feeling sorry for yourself,” he says. “It’s more of a case of, how do you move forwards? I think the best step is always to have a level head, a drive to want to develop yourself, because it’s a short career in terms of your life, and injuries may happen. To try to wrap my head around why it happened at the last World Cup, or the T20 one before that, it’s just not going to get anyone anywhere.
“I was in America, a million miles away from everything. The amount of times I had to explain cricket to people. And it ranged from people asking me: ‘Is it the sport with horses?’, or even asking me if it was the sport that was in Harry Potter. I think it was nice to be out there because no one really cared and I think that was infectious, and I caught that at some point where it was almost like, right, looking forward, what have we got next?”
Next for Topley is the T20 series against West Indies, which starts in Barbados next Tuesday after the last of three one-day internationals. He is already in the Caribbean, the only player not actively involved in the first three games to arrive so soon. After four weeks without being able to so much as hold a ball he has ratcheted training up to 100% intensity, and on Tuesday bowled at a batter for the first time since Mumbai.
“I’m fit to play, it’s just match sharpness – have I caught enough balls, have I bowled enough balls? It’s a judgment of, is this the best version of me?
“I just never want to stand still. I think the difference between playing [for England] and any other sort of cricket is that there’s a whole country trying to take your spot. There’s always a viewpoint that you’re replaceable. So I don’t want to stand still and let people catch up or overtake me, and I think having fresh faces here in the West Indies is another chance to, not reinvent yourself, but to push forward.”
