I told Key Hartley could cut it out in India. I was right!

THANkS Tom, you proved me right. For I will let you into a little secret. I’m quite friendly with England’s director of cricket Rob key and, talking about this tour of India last summer, I promoted the cause of our hero Tom Hartley. Whenever I watch my old club Lancashire, I am most interested in character and how a player prepares. The lad looked bang on.

One of my points was that on the subcontinent you don’t need flighty English-style spinners, but tall ones who hit the pitch hard. Bowlers such as Ravindra Jadeja and Ravichandran Ashwin. That, for me, brought Hartley into the selection equation.

In this match, Hartley and his fellow left-armer Jadeja bowled at 60mph — the optimum speed for the conditions. Shane Warne used to bowl his leg-spin at 49-50. Remember, Warne averaged 43 with the ball in India, way down on his career mark of 25. You have to fire the ball into the surface. So, why doesn’t Hartley produce such outstanding performances in the County Championship? For a start it’s a good pitch at Old Trafford these days, certainly not one that spins from ball one. In home conditions, he has looked more of a white-ball bowler and his record of 40 wickets in 20 first-class appearances backs that up. But he is also learning his craft.

On a spinning pitch in India, because of his 6ft 4in height and speed through the air, Hartley will send down plenty of get-out balls. And India’s reaction to him suggested they were wary of this potential, deciding from ball one that they were going to clatter him. They now know he’s of good stock. He’s from a sporting family — his father Bill was a Great Britain international athlete — so he didn’t wither. Trying to get bowlers out of the attack by demoralising them is an old-school tactic. But if it’s spinning, Hartley’s got every chance because of his attributes. He has put a marker down that on these surfaces he can be dynamite. As a spinner in the fourth innings in India, he will have known, ‘This is down to me’. He was asked to step up and clinch the win.

To respond like that was a wonderful achievement.