Wisden Cricket Monthly magazine editor
Rob Key is seemingly not for turning. Speaking to Wisden last December, he reiterated the profile of seam bowler he is looking for in the England Test team. “ Whatever you reward in life grows,” the ECB’s managing director of men’s cricket told the In The Bubble podcast. “And what we’ ve rewarded in county cricket was medium-pace bowlers, for lots of different reasons. But international cricket doesn’t reward that, so you’re trying to find which ones are going to be suitable.”
That search has led Key to hand Test caps to Jamie Overton, Josh Tongue, Gus Atkinson, Josh Hull and Brydon Carse since taking charge in April 2022 – all tall men capable of bowling upwards of 85mph. Dillon Pennington is another strapping quick who got the call before injury scuppered his chances of a debut last summer. The only outlier is Matt Potts, Durham’s lineand-length merchant, who is a few clicks slower and a couple of inches shorter than the rest.