Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
Foursome Potts shows Ben and Baz he has the artillery to cause rivals serious Harm
AMONG the blazered battalion’s picnic hampers, it was the prawn of a new era.
But since Old Father Time took guard on his weather vane high above St John’s Wood, seldom has there been a more thrilling entry on the Lord’s landscape than Matt Potts introducing himself to Test cricket.
Presented with his England cap before the start of play by Steve Harmison, Potts will never forget a debut sprinkled with four wickets, two catches and retiring hurt with cramp as New Zealand’s innings was wrapped up faster than a Jubilee fly-past by the Red Arrows.
In his pomp, Grievous Bodily Harmison made the Kiwis hop around and his fellow son of Ashington, Mark Wood, is no slouch, either.
Now, as Sunderland-born Potts rolled off the same conveyor belt – not so much from the
Durham Light Infantry as the Tyne & Wear heavy artillery – he looked heaven-sent. To the manna born.
Maintaining tight lines and a full length, he bowls a ‘heavy’ ball, hitting the pitch like a piston and giving batsmen the hurry-up like a cocker spaniel ambushing the postman.
It took just five balls for Potts to claim a maiden Test wicket, the prize scalp of New Zealand skipper Kane Williamson, which left the
Black Caps 12-4 inside the opening hour of the series.
The big first hour has become one of Test cricket’s most tedious cliches, lazier than a hammock on a sunny afternoon, but it has never announced a new regime quite like this. Even in their wildest team meetings, captain Ben Stokes and coach Brendon Mccullum could not have envisaged such exquisite carnage.
And when Potts smuggled two more jaffas through Daryl Mitchell and Tom Blundell’s defences, the scoreboard at lunch was a familiar requiem to woeful batting, but with a new twist: 39 for six, and it wasn’t England.
The only shame, as he lined up
Kiwis No.11 Trent Boult and with a debut entry on the Lord’s honours box there for the taking, was that Potts (celebrating with Stokes, above) shuffled off in mid-over with cramp in his left leg.
But it was nowhere near the bitter-sweet experience of another England baptism on the same ground, against the same opposition, exactly 12 months earlier. Ollie Robinson walked off at Headquarters, two wickets and bags of promise in credit, only to be frogmarched into the headmaster’s study to explain historic tweets of dubious taste.
Give or take that cramp, there were no such blemishes to eclipse Potts’ 4-13 off 9.2 overs.
“The lad can bowl – he’s strong, has a big heart and a mind of his own,” said Harmison. “Chuffed to bits for the lad.”
For Ben and Baz, it could hardly have gone any better on their first day in office – until the late clatter of wickets, including Boult bouncing out Potts, took the shine off a fine bowling display.
And as Potts marked out his run-up in Harmy’s footsteps, England emerged from a torrid winter to discover it’s usually darkest before the dawn.