Westley: My Ashes dream hinges on a haul of runs
Tom Westley knows he has within his grasp a place on this winter’s Ashes tour, but whether he realises his “childhood dream” will be decided by runs in the final two Tests against West Indies.
Westley, Mark Stoneman and Dawid Malan are in the same position. They have places to seal in this series and England are desperate they all make the breakthrough to ease Ashes planning.
After 59 in his second innings at the Oval, Westley has scored 29, nine and eight in three innings and was dismissed at Edgbaston lbw playing to the leg side, an aspect of his technique that has been examined by opponents and pundits.
A hundred at Headingley, the venue for the second Test, this week would guarantee Westley an Ashes place, but another failure would put huge pressure on him at Lord’s for the third Test.
“I am focusing on the here and now because I want to score runs, I need to score runs,” he said. “If I don’t score any runs then I won’t achieve that childhood dream of playing in the Ashes.
“So, I’m very much in the here and the now. I want to do it by enjoying it. I don’t want to overload myself with pressure because it’s obvious that any specialist batsman playing for England needs to score runs.”
Articulate and self-deprecating, at 28 Westley is a mature cricketer and appears to be handling the pressure well but an Ashes tour would mean a lot at home, with his family steeped in cricket.
““It’s actually strange, I spoke to my mum on the phone last night about hopefully getting selected for the third Test at Lord’s and she just started crying, she couldn’t speak back to me.
“Growing up, that’s what she envisaged for me: playing at Lord’s. I can’t even bring up the Ashes to her. I was actually shocked on the phone because she couldn’t speak back to me, and I was like ‘signal gone?’ My dad’s a bricklayer by trade, very vocal and covered in tattoos, very different to me. And my mum’s always in the background, doing my whites, lunches, doesn’t get much credit. It was surprising to hear her well up. We were talking about tickets for Lord’s if I was selected and she couldn’t get a word in. I think getting selected on the Ashes would be times that by 10.”