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The 6ft 7in left-arm seamer Josh Hull will play his first Test match for England on Friday at The Oval against Sri Lanka. In the lone alteration made by England from the team that defeated the opposition by 190 runs at Lord’s to take a commanding 2-0 lead in the series, he will take Matthew Potts’ spot.
Just 20 years old, Hull filled in for Mark Wood on left field when the latter’s thigh injury forced him out of the series. In his nine County Championship games for Leicestershire, he has taken 11 wickets at an average of 84.54, but last month, his physical features caught the attention of England’s management, as he took match figures of 5 for 74 on his England Lions debut.
Although his presence at The Oval will probably knock him out of contention for the first Twenty20 International at the Utilita Bowl next Wednesday, with a 24-hour turnaround from the scheduled end of the third Test, he has also been named in England’s white-ball squads to play Australia later this month.
Ollie Pope, who is standing in for the injured Ben Stokes as captain, said that Hull has “a massive ceiling” – figuratively, as well as literally. “When you’re 6ft 7in and you can get it down pushing up to the 85-90mph mark, and with a bit of swing with the left-arm angle, there’s a lot to like about it,” Pope said. “It’s a really exciting week for him.”
Pope said that Hull would add a “point of difference” to England’s attack. “With the height, you can draw in some more edges with that extra bounce,” he explained. “It makes it a lot harder to drive the ball, especially if there is a little bit of bounce at The Oval – which there can be, especially early in the game.
“And then the angle… We’ve played four right-arm seamers for the first two games, so it’s just something different for the batters to think about in the opposition, with the ball coming into the right-hander, and obviously away from the left-hander, with that swing. It’s a point of difference, and he’s got some good pace as well when he’s clicking in the nets.”
Potts took five wickets at 29.60 in the opening two Test matches of the series, which led to his selection. While he managed to overcome a nervous opening over in the Old Trafford Test to produce a crucial spell of 3 for 47 in the second, his figures have been insignificant in comparison to those of Gus Atkinson, who took five wickets in the second innings at Lord’s, his third of a debut summer in which he has taken 33 wickets at an average of 18.06.
Hull will be just the second left-arm seamer to play a Test match for England since Ryan Sidebottom’s final Test match in early 2010 and the first since Sam Curran in 2021.