LAHORE — In a match where we were looking for pointers towards this winter’s Ashes, it was a Yorkshire-raised, Coventry City-supporting cricketer playing for Australia who hammered out the biggest statement ahead of that blockbuster series Down Under.
Meet Josh Inglis, a dynamic wicketkeeper-batter who moved from Leeds to Perth just short of his 15th birthday back in 2010, and whose sensational 120 from 86 balls helped his adopted country chase down 352 in a pulsating Champions Trophy match in Lahore on Saturday night.
The result was a body blow for England, who now need to defy a run of 17 defeats in 24 one-day internationals by winning their final two group matches against Afghanistan and South Africa to stand a chance of reaching the semi-finals.
That this crushing loss was dealt by the hand of one of their own will hurt England more.
Having grown up on the outskirts of Leeds, Inglis played age-group cricket for Yorkshire for four years from Under-11s to Under-14s before his parents – dad, Martin, a tiler, and mother, Sarah, an airport worker – relocated to western Australia.
Famously, he was pictured back in 2008 being presented with a Year 8 sports award at St Mary’s Comprehensive, Ilkley, by Leeds band Kaiser Chiefs.
Speaking last November, Inglis revealed how hard the move Down Under had been for him and his brother, Joe: “I spent 14 years there [in England] before I moved over to Perth in 2010.
“It was obviously tough at that age when you’re starting to grow a group of friends at school and then you’ve got to move which me and my brother were not happy about at the time.
“But I think the beauty of sport and cricket is you’re able to immerse yourself in a new group and meet new people straight away.”
Navigating Australian age-group cricket as an English teenager was not easy for Inglis, the subject of many a sledge from his contemporaries.
Yet after showing his talent early on, he was quickly taken into the western Australia talent pathway.
Despite the accent and Aussie cricketer-bro moustache straight from central casting, Inglis has not forgotten his roots.
It is why moments after his match-winning knock in Lahore he was checking his phone to see how Coventry’s Championship match against Preston North End had gone.
Inglis, whose dad was born in the city, even mentioned the result when asked about it in his post-match press conference: “Yeah, they won 2-1.”
There were also plenty of messages on his phone from relatives back in the UK: “Yeah, I’ve had a few already, so that’s been nice.”
He was quick, though, to shut down talk of him still supporting England. “Yeah, those days are long gone, I think.”
Yet it’s not that long since he admitted that was the case, telling The Daily Mail in 2017: “I still support England and it’s a weird situation to be in, because I am trying to play for Australia.
“Because I was living in England for so long it’s hard to support someone else; to support another country if you’ve not been born there. Players with dual nationalities are quite common in international cricket and it creates interest, I suppose, but to be honest I would play for Kenya if I could.
“I just want to play cricket at the highest level possible. I don’t think I would move back to England now and, while you can never completely discount things, I guess I made the decision to play for Australia a couple of years ago.
“I am committed to taking my career as far as I can. This is my job. People move jobs, move companies and wouldn’t get any s**t for it, but if you move country as a sportsman you are in the spotlight.”
Inglis was 22 when he made those remarks but four years later his tone had changed.
“As a kid growing up in England, I obviously supported England,” he said.
“But that’s all changed now moving to Australia. Once you start building your way up in professional cricket, it’s quite hard trying to play for a team and not supporting them. That changed pretty quickly.”
The following year he made his international debut in a T20 against Sri Lanka in Sydney. His rise has been stratospheric since then as last November, in an ODI against Pakistan in Perth, he became the first English-born player to captain Australia in almost 140 years. The last to do so was Percy McDonnell in 1888.
London-born McDonnell was a Greek scholar who became the first captain to elect to field after winning the toss in his first Test as captain in 1887. Despite bowling England out for 45 in Sydney, Australia still went on to lose by 13 runs. Coincidentally, Australia also lost Inglis’s first game in charge by eight wickets.
However, he is a player who, aged 30, looks set to enjoy his peak years playing at the top level. Only last month he scored the second-fastest century by a Test debutant – in 94 balls – against Sri Lanka in Galle. He was the first Australian player to reach three figures on debut for a decade.
After smashing two hundreds in T20 cricket already, his maiden ODI ton saw him become only the fourth Australian man to post centuries in all three formats. He needed just 56 innings to achieve the feat way quicker than any of the others – Glenn Maxwell (107), Shane Watson (328) and David Warner (332).
There is now every chance Inglis can cement his place in Australia’s Test XI for the Ashes. If he does, it would be an emotional moment for him to walk out in his adopted city of Perth for the first Test in November to take on the land of his birth in the biggest series of all.
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