Josh Tongue to make England Test debut against Ireland at Lord’s

Josh Tongue has been parachuted straight into the England team for the first Test of the summer against Ireland on Thursday, with the Worcestershire seamer set to make his debut after edging Mark Wood and Chris Woakes out of the side.

England’s head coach, Brendon McCullum, described Tongue as “a big strong lad” who “bowls quite fast and has some real skills” after watching him in action during the team’s first training session of the summer on Monday. After their second, McCullum broke the news to Tongue that he would play against Ireland.

“I bowled at some of the lads on Monday,” Tongue said. “I felt like I bowled nicely and obviously I was going in with no expectations to be playing at all, and just bowling at high-class players in the nets was good for me. I must have bowled fairly well to get selected.

“Baz came up to me just before training finished [on Tuesday] and gave me the good news. It’s an amazing feeling, a dream come true really.”

Neither Wood or Woakes are injured, though the former’s participation was in doubt as England sought to manage the workload of their one remaining bowler of express pace ahead of the Ashes, which starts at Edgbaston on 16 June. Olly Stone, who might have provided a fast-bowling option, has been ruled out of that match with a hamstring strain while Jofra Archer will miss the entire summer with a recurrence of an elbow injury.

Tongue has his own experience with serious injury having spent 15 months suffering from thoracic outlet syndrome, the compression of nerves in the shoulder, during which he considered retiring from the game altogether. “I’m just proud of myself and how I held in there,” he said. “I was very close to retiring – I’d had two operations, seen a lot of specialists