Hail the young hero!
Tom, 24, inspires all-time great win over India on Test debut
HIS father won gold for Great Britain in the 1974 European Athletics Championships.
And yesterday Tom Hartley wrote himself into sporting history too with a cricket ball in his hand as part of an extraordinary zero-to-hero turnaround.
Making his Test debut for England against India in the Hyderabad heat, the 6ft 4in spin bowler’s first ball on Thursday was smashed for six. It might have put paid to a lesser competitor’s hopes of glory.
But fuelled no doubt by the years of encouragement from his medal-winning father Bill, and stirring words of support from Ashes hero and fellow Lancastrian Andrew Flintoff, he hit back yesterday.
Taking seven wickets in India’s second innings, he bowled England to the most unlikely of victories – a surprise result hailed as one of the all-time greats.
However, in what has become something of a theme during his slow but steady rise to the top,
‘Given a bat, ball and a set of stumps’
the 24-year-old’s supportive parents were unable to watch his triumph in person. They were 4,700 miles away watching him on television at the family plant nursery in Maghull, Merseyside – later revealing they planned a modest celebration in the form of a cup of herbal tea.
‘Wow,’ wrote his mother Ann-Louise and father Bill on Facebook. ‘Proud doesn’t cover it! What a fantastic start for our son, and hopefully more to come. We are overwhelmed with the support from our customers and local community too. How amazing to know that he has so many people willing him on!
Not to mention all of the time, effort and support from Ormskirk Cricket Club – where it all started.
Now for a herbal tea, we think our heart rates might come down eventually.’
A keen schoolboy footballer, Hartley’s earliest sporting ambitions lay with Everton FC.
But moving to £13,500-a-year Merchant Taylors’ School in Crosby pointed him in a different direction to either football or athletics like his father, who became a rugby league sprint coach after winning gold in the 4x400m relay in Rome in 1974.
‘When he was in year five or six, each class was given a bat, a ball, and a set of stumps and told it would be good for them to play at breaktimes and lunchtime and that’s how he started,’ his father told The Cricketer magazine.
His son added: ‘Dad always had me in the back garden playing footy and cricket and stuff.
‘He was quite happy for me to go down my own route, he didn’t pressure me to go into athletics.’
A self-confessed ‘chubby’ teenager, Hartley made his debut for Lancashire in 2020, with his parents unable to watch due to pandemic restrictions on sporting events. Last September he made his England one-day debut against Ireland at Trent Bridge with his first cap presented by Flintoff.
But again his parents had to make do with a television screen.
‘My family had been quizzing me as to whether they should come down, but I told them not to bother as I wasn’t going to play,’ Hartley said. It was only at breakfast on the morning of the match that the coach informed him a team-mate had come down with tonsillitis and he was starting. ‘I texted them that morning saying “oops”,’ he recalled.
However his girlfriend Lauren – understood to be a physiotherapist – was able to watch his debut after dashing to Nottingham.
The quality in the england captaincy of Ben Stokes I like the most is his stubbornness. Sometimes stubbornness makes you a better leader.
If you have unerring faith both in a particular method of playing, and in the individuals you have selected to do the job for you, it can be so powerful.
Stokes never manoeuvres away from what this england team are trying to achieve, no matter what anyone from the outside might be saying. Occasionally, it would be natural to doubt yourself a little bit. Maybe we shouldn’t have picked four spinners? Maybe we should’ve picked Liam Dawson. Maybe we shouldn’t be hooking every ball at Lord’s?
But Stokes never does. Like coach Brendon McCullum — whose response to being rolled over by South Africa 18 months ago was for england to go even harder at the opposition — he doubles down on decisions.
So, his response when Tom hartley was proving expensive in the first innings against India here was not to whip him out of the attack, but to use his emotional intelligence and back him even more.
I never doubted that Stokes had cricketing intelligence. You only have to think of his two matchdefining innings in World Cup finals, the unbeaten headingley hundred against Australia in 2019, and last year’s attempts for an Ashes repeat at Lord’s to realise how clever he is in that regard. But you never know with a captain and an all-rounder, and someone who does great things on the field, whether they understand other people.
Various captains throughout history have been so good as individual players that they can’t relate to those who aren’t at that same level as themselves, and subsequently they can’t understand when people can’t do what is being asked of them.
Stokes, though, has great empathy, clearly not forgetting what it’s like to be on debut, because he always seems to be accounting for nervousness when new players come into the side. Maybe this, and the environment they are brought into, explains the immediate success of Will Jacks, Rehan Ahmed, Josh Tongue and now hartley.
And the decision to persevere with hartley on day one paid off because it gave the Lancashire left-armer the confidence when it came to bowling at a target in the final innings of the match.
having watched his Indian counterparts in action, hartley controlled his length much better second time around, showing a good capacity for learning as well as mental toughness in the process, and england benefitted.
And the way he was handled shows you why his team-mates want to run through brick walls for Stokes. Then, when they see moments like his run-out of Ravindra Jadeja, they must think he is super-human.
This is 14 wins from 19 matches since Stokes became england’s permanent Test captain.
Yes, they might come unstuck in the next four games. We all know what happened the last time they played in India three years ago, but it will not take away from these four days one bit.
how big a win was this? Well, you could certainly argue it is one of england’s greatest. You just don’t come back from conceding a deficit of 190 on first innings in India, and remember they were also 163 for five in the second innings.
With three quality spinners on the opposition, the history books told you it needed something remarkable to pull off this result, and that is what they got.
Pre-hartley it came from the bat of Ollie Pope, who produced his greatest knock in an england shirt and one to rival that of Kevin Pietersen in Mumbai 11 years ago.
This was a lad who had not batted for a long time, had scored just one in the first innings, and who hadn’t had great returns in Test match cricket in India.
It wasn’t only his technique that impressed. his shot selection — sweeps, reverse sweeps, scoops, use of the feet — was remarkable.
Again, Pope is someone to have benefited from the StokesMcCullum regime.
Firstly, they moved him up to No 3, a position in which he is revelling. Secondly, his confidence has grown since he was made vice- captain. he is a player who thrives on confidence.
And the removal of the fear of failure from this england environment means that someone such as
Pope is no longer worried about getting out when he is in, allowing him to take the attacking option whenever he was in doubt in the second innings.
It was a policy that paid off. He’s a nervy starter, as we saw on day one, but given licence to express himself, he took risks, but never high-risk. That’s how good his judgment was.
Remember too, England aren’t up against emerging Indian spinners. These guys are the finished articles. Some of the world’s best ever.
In contrast, England picked novices in a spin quartet on a hunch from Stokes, McCullum and England director of cricket Rob key that it was the right combination for these conditions, despite others suggesting two seamers would provide better balance.
Crucially, their decision also added a bit more batting depth, and the runs of Ahmed and Hartley proved absolutely vital in the end.
Another example of this England side prospering from doing things the Stokes way — and after a breathtaking few days, Test cricket is grateful for it.