Matt Potts is bruised but unbowed after Pant dishes out Test lesson

The cricket ebbed with the weather at Edgbaston. England’s advantage went with the clouds that blew away in the afternoon, and India’s batsmen thrived under a bright blue sky later in the day. It made a long, hard day of it for the bowlers, who found the ground shifted so quickly beneath them that they lost the footing they’d secured in the morning.

When he started bowling his spell to Rishabh Pant, Matt Potts had taken two for 39, when he finished it, he had two for 72. A four through cover, two through point, two more to long leg, another through mid-wicket, another over the slips, then he was pulled out of the attack.

It felt like an education in the perils of Test bowling.

It was only three months ago that Potts was still grinding away in county cricket. He got his first ever five-for in first-class cricket when he was playing for Durham against Leicestershire. When he spoke to the press that evening, they asked him if he wanted to play for England. Even he thought it was a little bit premature.

“It is every boy’s dream,” Potts said then, “but I’d be daft to get ahead of myself. One of the stepping stones to that would be to get myself involved in the England Lions.” After all, he hadn’t been involved in any of the England squads, Lions or otherwise, since his days playing for the under-19 team against India back in 2017.

And now here he was three games and 14 wickets into the Test career he had been dreaming about. At the ECB’s head office they keep lists of the leading contenders for each position in all of England’s international teams. You wonder how far down they had to go through the fast bowlers to find Potts when they called him up in spring. Past Jimmy Anderson and Stuart Broad, of course, on beyond Chris