NICK FRIEND: It's one thing to have Axar Patel's frame, but another to realise between days two and four that you can lose 10mph, slow your run-up, and, just like that, emerge from the toughest afternoon of your life with the realisation of a dream
"A good student" was how Tom Hartley described himself back in November, every inch a chilled-out, rookie spinner, not then named in England's squad to tour India, but with enough nous to smell what was coming.
He was personable and interesting, holding court in front of a smattering of journalists at Loughborough, reeling off the other spinners he studies in his spare time, acknowledging the physical attributes that brought on the Axar Patel comparisons but not quite daring to dream.
Attributes have been much discussed ever since. The mere notion was ridiculed at the time, the idea that England might select off feet and inches rather than wickets and strike rates. The accusation was this was a gamble based on feel, when a fairer estimate is probably that this was closer to an educated guess based on talent identification.
To those open-minded enough, it made sense at the time. England were convinced through their data that what Hartley offered might be far more effective in India than in the County Championship, where he only really usurped Matt Parkinson for a spot in Lancashire's team in 2023. The horse for this course, essentially. In the long run, you'd think that selecting in this way means a more open field, fewer players slipping through the cracks.
"We can't wait for runs and wickets to stack up, so we have to be quite brave with our talent ID, and I think we've done that," said Mo Bobat, speaking on the same day at Loughborough.
He knew it was a bold call, so he laid out the pathway to reaching Project Hartley. It was more insight than you normally get around an individual selection, perhaps aware that people would want an explanation for a choice that looked otherwise leftfield, even for the Stokes era.
England had offered him a challenge, but also an opportunity. And that is how the last week has played out: there was a time on day one when this looked a horrid, brutal request of a relative novice, and you wondered about England's duty of care to, in first-class-cricket terms, a kid.
But Hartley bowled the first ball of The Hundred, made his List A debut for England Lions, made his ODI debut as a last-minute injury replacement so late that he'd told his family not to bother coming, and has a father who represented Great Britain at the Commonwealth Games. Every step-up has been a leap, and somewhere in that continual graduation to this point, he has learned to be thick-skinned and to cast away his greatest fears. So, when he was belted for six with his first ball as a Test cricketer, you wonder now if we were all more worried for him than the man himself.
Hartley had Mohammed Siraj stumped to win England the Test (Stu Forster/Getty Images)
"Well, he's not the first and he won't be the last," said Hartley, with all the phlegm required of an unmysterious finger-spinner in this age, when asked after his match-winning heroics about Yashasvi Jaiswal's means of introducing him to the Test arena. "Thankfully I've had this white-ball background and, even playing Champo this past year, lads have come after me and you've just got to accept it."
Other England debuts have gone upsettingly awry in recent years, though, and it was impossible not to look out for Hartley, another talented young cricketer off the county conveyer belt, and to many back home just a softly-spoken product of Ormskirk Cricket Club. Indeed, Hyderabad's Rajiv Gandhi International Stadium joins Old Trafford, Billericay, Rainford, Colwyn Bay, Rainhill, Wallasey, Great Crosby, Leigh, Neston and Ormskirk's Brook Lane home ground as the scene of a Tom Hartley five-wicket haul.
Safe to say, that happy ending didn't always appear inevitable. These days, the disparity in coverage between domestic and international cricket tends to mean the first time that Joe Bloggs watches Tom Hartley bowl is when Ben Stokes throws Tom Hartley the new ball in Hyderabad – a move that, when first raised to Hartley beforehand by Brendon McCullum, was laughed off by the 24-year-old as a piss-take.
Making the right first impression on the biggest day of your life is bloody tough: it's why job interviews are intimidating beasts and why we invite our friends to our wedding. In Hartley's case, it meant doing something he'd never done before – taking the new ball in a first-class game – before the eyes of Ravi Shastri, Kevin Pietersen, Murali Kartik, and hundreds of millions more.
That has never felt fair, and it's certainly unlike, say, football where the precursor to an England cap tends to be a public clamour. Here, it was preceded by sceptical derision and an annual debate founded on English cricket's eternal misapprehension and inherent distrust of spin bowling.
So, when everyone watched Jaiswal take him down on Thursday evening, that was for most of them a first introduction to England's bright winter hope. Social media, as it does, made its mind up pretty quickly, and some desperately dumb, kneejerk tweets appear to have disappeared since then.
In the end, it was an extraordinary debut for the Lancashire spinner (Stu Forster/Getty Images)
He leaves Hyderabad for Vizag with an army of new fans, whose respect for Hartley extends beyond his left-arm tweak and into his character.
His career to date has been based on the latter more than the former. He was a late developer, a project player for Carl Crowe at Lancashire, in his own words "always the chubbier kid" before a growth spurt led to a rigorous spell in the gym, designed to develop the strength for his newfound gangliness, and a trip to Australia in his late teens to bowl all day.
Crowe has been a huge help, as you'd expect. If more counties employed specialist spin coaches, one wonders whether the national stocks might be a bit fuller. It isn't rocket science, when you think about it; it can't be a major coincidence that the best wicketkeeper in the country works full-time with a head coach who kept wicket in 82 Test matches.
Nevertheless, Hartley had bowled in the fourth innings of a match just seven times before Sunday morning. "But it was fantastic," he says, which somehow still understates the level of achievement.
"It's such a nice feeling that every ball you're going to put down is going to turn quite a lot. You can just keep it so simple, pitch every ball on the stumps and if it skids on perfect and if it doesn't, if it rags a foot, even better. It's just unbelievable."
Jack Leach, enduring his own nightmare week, encouraged him to visualise Hyderabad as Old Trafford and implored him to keep positive. Others focused solely on him swinging Ravichandran Ashwin for six.
England's spin coach, Jeetan Patel, suggested slowing down his run-up, one of the fundamentals most susceptible to crumbling when tension creeps in. Kartik on commentary was particularly critical of Hartley's falling front arm in the first innings and his consequent inconsistency; there was no such discussion second time around.
"When you run in quick, I just tend to lose my action a bit," admitted Hartley, who once he was into his groove on day four was twirling out some of the best overs of the match with consummate ease.
It hadn't started out so well for Hartley, swept for six with his first ball (Stu Forster/Getty Images)
It all goes back to the speed of his learning. That is part of talent identification too: it's one thing to have Axar's frame – I mean, so did Abraham Lincoln, but so what – it's another to realise between days two and four that you can lose 10mph, sedate your run-up, focus entirely on your length, be your own man and, just like that, emerge from the toughest afternoon of your life with the match ball and a memory to treasure forever.
None of this means that you stop being patient with him, nor that you start expecting the world. That was Hartley's twenty-first first-class appearance; Joe Root has bowled 1,500 more deliveries in Test cricket alone than Hartley has ever rolled out with a red ball. He's a good student, learning on the job; there will be more good days, more bad. None, though, more satisfying than this.
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