Young Blood - The tale of England's youngest Test match cricketers

Rehan Ahmed is set to become England's youngest Test cricketer in the final match of their series against Pakistan.

Ahmed will break the record set by legendary Yorkshire batsman Brian Close who was 18 years and 149 days when he played against New Zealand at Old Trafford in 1949.

England have selected only 21 Test players to debut under the age of 21 including some of the greats of the game. Pop quiz can our resident Arsenal fan boys @amirtheawesome1 @belemo @ogeewitty name the player in the middle of the 3 (without reading below) who also won an FA Cup with Arsenal? image source 1, 2, 3 all used under CC license

Coincidentally, Ahmed replaces 40-year-old James Anderson in what is essentially a dead rubber following victories for the tourists in the opening 2 Tests. Anderson who has played a record 177 Tests for England made his debut in 2003 as a 20-year-old, over a year before Ahmed was even born!

Blooding young players hasn't traditionally been something that England or indeed any team outside the sub-continent has done. Looking at the list of the youngest test cricketers in history it is dominated by players from India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. In fact, of the youngest ever 20 Test cricketers at the time of writing, 19 of them hail from those 3 nations with only Mujeeb Ur Rahman from Afghanistan who debuted in 2018 during Afghanistan's first ever Test, breaking the trend.

Ahmed becomes just the 2nd player under 19 to have been capped in Tests by England. By contrast their opponents Pakistan have given 36 U-19 players a shot at the big time despite having played less than half the Test matches that England have

For England, even if we were to expand the list of young Test cricketers to include anyone who debuted under the age of 21, the nation that has played comfortably more long form cricket than any other (England will be playing their 1058th Test this weekend) will be giving just it's 22nd cap to a player who couldn't legally drink in the USA.

Historically, players who have come into the England Test side young haven't often succeeded which is undoubtedly why the selectors have not been keen to give more of them a chance. What's more, the tendency for those same selectors to favour having players who have paid their dues in County cricket is also a big reason as to why we haven't seen as many talented young cricketers given the chance to accelerate their international career.

However, there is every reason to think that this trend will not continue under the current management of Stokes and McCullum who have already given debuts to 23-year-old Mathew Potts and Harry Brooks not to mention Will Jacks who celebrated his 24th birthday 10 days before winning his first Test cap earlier this month. Indeed, even the debut cap given to Liam Livingstone at the start of the tour is a sign that the need for players to prove themselves in County cricket is over. Livingstone may be 29 years old and have been around the domestic circuit for a while but he hadn't played first class cricket for a couple of years and was selected to make his Test debut largely off the back of his form in the T20 format.

Ahmed then joins a relatively young and certainly confident squad who have won 8 of their 9 Tests since McCullum and Stokes took over. That in many ways is in stark contrast to the circumstances that quite a few of England's young cricketers in the past have found themselves coming into the team with change often being forced due to a run of poor performances and the squad finding itself in a period of transition.

Still, it is tempting to say that Ahmed is being thrown in at the deep end, after all this is a player who has played just 3 first class matches and 7 list A games for Leicestershire. Much like Livingstone, his primary success to date has been in the shortest format where he's taken 21 wickets in 19 matches and appeared in a couple of games for Southern Brave in The Hundred this summer as well as the U-19 World Cup for England. That experience of larger crowds and TV cameras will hopefully serve him well as the eyes of the cricketing world turn to watch how England's latest young spinning hope performances.

I say latest because while England have traditionally been slow to blood young cricketers, it has been in the spin department of late that they've given the kids a chance.

Mason Crane and Dom Bess both debuted as 20-year-olds in 2018. Crane returned figures of 1/198 in his first and to date only Test for England during another failed Ashes tour, and while Bess has gone on to play 14 Tests and put in a couple of good performances, his recent struggles to win games for England on turning pitches in the sub-continent have seen England look at alternatives while Bess is sent back to County cricket to work on his game.

The truth is that England have been searching for a truly Test quality spinner since the retirement of Graeme Swann nearly a decade ago. Moeen Ali and Jack Leach have been decent performers but England clearly feel they need more fire power and particularly a spinner that can win them games when the conditions are in their favour.

Whether Rehan Ahmed is the answer to that problem is far too early to say but the comparisons with Swann are worth making. Swann also debuted for England as a youngster (he was 20) albeit in 50 over cricket and had to wait 8 years before being called up for his first Test cap. Thereafter, he took 255 wickets in 60 Tests and perhaps more importantly took 17 x 5 wicket hauls, the kind of performances that win Tests. By contrast, England's current number 1 spinner in Leech has taken just 4 x 5 wicket hauls in 31 Tests.

It might be that England are keen to give Rehan Ahmed an early taste of international cricket so that he knows what he needs to work up to if he wants to succeed at this level. That might be a successful tactic but it will still require careful management of the youngster and his development.

One of the big talking points in the English game is how pitches in County cricket which is only played across 4 days, don't favour the development of spinners . Therefore, sending Rehan Ahmed back to play for Leicestershire might not necessarily have the desired effect.

However, Rehan Ahmed offers more than just leg-spin to this England team as we've already seen from his fledgling County career. He scored his maiden first class century in September batting at number 5 for Leicestershire, a game in which he also took a 5 wicket haul.

Being a multi-dimensional player is a major feather in the cap of any cricketer but particularly for a spinner in England where there will be days in the field where you aren't needed with the ball, it is useful to know that he could perform with the bat.

Certainly England would like a bit more depth to their batting options. In the 2nd Test against Pakistan, Ollie Robinson was left to bat at 8 and Mark Wood at 9 leaving very long tail. Being able to slot in an all-rounder as England have had in previous years with the likes of Moeen Ali and Chris Woakes would give their batting line-up far more stability as we head into a year where they'll be striving to win back the Ashes.

Here then are the young England Test cricketers that Rehan Ahmed will be looking to emulate ...

England's best young Test cricketers

Brian Close (18 years 149 days) - The man who Reham Ahmed will replace as England's youngest Test cricketer. Close's personality alone dominated English cricket for over 6 decades both on and off the field. On it, he was known as a fearless batsman in an age before helmets and other protective equipment and through several of the golden ages of fast bowling. His technique of simply letting hostile bowling hit his body and not even flinching isn't one that should be attempted be tried at home!

Denis Compton (19 years 83 days) - An iconic figure of both pre and post-war cricket not to mention a professional footballer to boot, Denis Compton is one of the finest cricketers and all around sportsman England has ever produced. Compton came from a working class background and honed his considerable skills with both bat and ball playing on the streets of London using lamp posts for stumps. He had scored 2 x centuries before the outbreak of WWII including one in his first Ashes Test but it was after the war that Compton really came alive. He scored vast amounts of runs in both international and domestic cricket and did it all with the kind of style and swagger that fans love to watch. You could argue that he was first modern great of the game and his star quality was such that in 1948 he became one of the first professional athletes to employ an agent, a decision that ultimately lead to him striking a deal with Brylcreem and his famous slick back hairstyle.

Bill Voce (20 years 156 days) - Beyond being one of England's youngest ever Test cricketers, Bill Voce's career story is both fascinating and sad. One half of the famous or perhaps in some parts of the world infamous pace attack that made up the 'bodyline series' against Australia in 1932-33, Voce actually started his career as a slow left-arm spinner, before later converting to a medium/fast bowler and then finally being convinced by England captain Douglas Jardin to bowl to take up 'leg theory' a tactic that at the time divided the cricketing world. Injuries, the fall out from the bodyline series and the 2nd World War meant that Voce played just 27 Tests for England despite starting his career so young.

Andrew Flintoff (20 years 229 days) - The hunt for the next Ian Botham had lead to England giving several young all-rounders a shot at the big time. The late Ben Hollioake had debuted the year before Flintoff at just 19 and even Phil DeFraitas was being hailed by certain sections of the cricketing community as the 2nd coming when he won his first cap in 1987 at roughly the same age as Freddie. However, it was the tubby Lancastrian that would ultimately go onto emulate Botham's heroics from 1982 by delivering England a famous Ashes series win in 2005. At his best and fittest his bowling, particularly around the wicket to left-handers, was irresistible with speed, bounce but also late movement. With bat in hand he had the rare ability to clear the bars as punters rushed to see the kind of big hitting that these days, thanks to the onset of T20 cricket, is taken for granted.

James Anderson (20 years 296 days) - As noted above so many young England cricketers have been brought into the side off the back of poor performances by the established pros and that is very much how Anderson was given his break. In the ODIs that followed England being blown away in an Ashes series down under (2002), they were left very short of options as experienced cricketers headed home or to the physio's table. England turned to a young swing bowler who had played just 3 x 50 over games for Lancashire and when Anderson debuted for England he did so without a name or number on his shirt! Performances in that series secured a place in the World Cup squad where his reputation continued to grow and lead to a Test debut the following summer. In his early years, his bowling could be brilliant, especially when the ball swung but his inconsistency lead to a period outside the Test side and it wasn't until 2008 that he really established himself in the side. The rest, as they say, is history as Anderson went on to smash records for Test caps won and wickets taken not just for England but in the history of of the game itself