How long can a hungry young player stay hungry – or young for that matter – when the fates seem so cruelly conspired against him? Five years have passed since Jordan Cox, then 19, announced his talents with a startling double-century for Kent in the Bob Willis Trophy, and four years since his Player-of-the-Match performance in their T20 Blast triumph at Edgbaston in 2021.
Three years have passed since Cox’s first England call-up, as an unused squad member on the T20I tour of Pakistan in 2022, and two years since a “disgusting” broken finger stopped him in full flow for Oval Invincibles in the Hundred, and left him facing surgery while his inevitable England debut was deferred yet again.
It’s been a year since he relaunched his county career at Essex, and six months since he finally broke into an England first XI, for five admittedly underwhelming white-ball appearances against Australia and West Indies last September and October. Nothing, however, compares to the agonies he endured on the Test tour of New Zealand the following month, just when it seemed that there was nothing left that could slow down an ambitious young man in a palpable hurry to succeed.
There Cox was in the nets in Queenstown, with the first of three guaranteed Test caps tattooed into his schedule: Christchurch, November 27. Cox was England’s designated wicketkeeper while Jamie Smith was away on paternity leave, and flavour of the month with Brendon McCullum, who felt his crashingly confident attitude would fit right in with his ethos.
But then, at the precise moment that McCullum was bigging up his impending debutant in a chat with the travelling media, Cox wore a lifter in the nets on his right thumb, and that was the end of his tour.
“I knew then and there, I was buggered … sorry for my French,” Cox says. “Absolutely gone … and it was absolutely devastating.
“It’s probably been the hardest winter I’ve ever had. To get picked to make your debut is something that you dream of as a kid. From the age of seven, when I started playing cricket, to getting my opportunity at 23, I was thinking, I’m the luckiest guy alive.
“I had known about it two months before. Baz was like, ‘just to let you know, you’re going be playing, you’re going to keep, you can play all three Tests. Smudge is going to have his kid. I want you to go out there and have a bit of fun’.”
The injury occurred just three days before the Test, which was just enough notice for Cox to get in an emergency phonecall to his family, who were already at Heathrow preparing to fly out and witness his proudest moment.
“My dad was in the queue at Heathrow about to leave [when I called him], and I was like, you can just turn around. There’s no point in you coming.
“My girlfriend ended up coming out, more for support, as I was going to have an operation straight away. But the surgeon said it could be quite risky, and the thumb may not move exactly how you want it to. With my body being young and healthy, we decided – as a family and as Essex – to leave it and let it naturally heal, and it has, which is so, so lucky. But it’s been a crazy, crazy winter.”
The injury itself is only part of the setback to Cox’s ambition, however. Every bit as relevant is the development of the team in his absence. While Ollie Pope took one for the team and shifted down the order to take over as wicketkeeper, Jacob Bethell breezed into the breach at No.3 to seize Cox’s mantle as England’s coming man. With Smith due to slot back in this summer, and Pope still the designated vice-captain, there are no obvious vacancies looming as England set their sights on a seismic six months against India and Australia.
“This game is an absolute, you know … nasty word,” Cox says. “It’s so difficult. There’s so many quality players out there, and they’re trying to work out who is fitting where. They’re not going to promise you something and then go back on it, so for me personally, I want to score as many runs as I can for Essex. And if that gets me an opportunity, that gets me an opportunity. If it doesn’t, that’s okay with me, because I know that I’m doing as much I can to win a Championship for Essex.”
Cox did at least find a positive in his predicament, as he turned his recuperation into an extended holiday with his family in Australia – much of it, he says, on Bondi Beach – but he doesn’t deny that he’s fallen off the radar a touch with regards to the England squads and, in particular, their newly installed head coach across formats.
“He’s been the world’s busiest man, hasn’t he?” Cox says of McCullum, whose grim first foray as white-ball head coach resulted in ten defeats in 11 matches in India and Pakistan, including the Champions Trophy, and culminated in the resignation of his captain, Jos Buttler. In such circumstances, Cox accepts that checking in on his recuperation is not exactly a priority.
“I understand … he sent me a message the day I left the group, just saying: ‘really sorry what happened, mate, it’s absolutely devastating … it’s so sad’. But unfortunately, that’s life and that’s sport. He’s not going to be a parent and text me every other day.
“[The whole squad] sent me a lovely message, hoping I recover well, which was really nice to take in. Obviously it would have been nicer for them to have all gone ‘well done on this series. You did really well’. But hopefully that’s around the corner.”
Instead, there’s scant little for Cox to look back on with any great fondness – least of all his comeback stint with Gulf Giants at the ILT20 in January, where he made a total of 186 runs in ten innings, with a solitary half-century.
“I can probably say it now, because I’ve been paid, but I was a month too early,” he says. “I got told I was supposed to have three months off. So I had two. I felt like I needed to play because I hadn’t been paid all winter, apart from a bit with England.
“I got one score [of 70] and I felt horrific, as if I hadn’t played cricket in years. It’s a weird feeling, going from playing every day and feeling amazing, to then having three months off, and sitting on Bondi. You go to hit a ball and you’re like, oh my God, I feel bad.”
He possibly felt something similar in his most recent England opportunity: the three-match ODI series in the Caribbean in October, in which he batted at 3 but made an underwhelming total of 22 runs in 56 balls. He did receive an utter snorter in the third of those matches, a vicious lifter from Alzarri Joseph, but two poor strokes in the first two ODIs would have undermined his claim to a Champions Trophy berth, even before his injury.
Cox, however, has already rationalised that experience. Like so many of his English peers, he has barely played a List A game since making his professional debut against Pakistan’s tourists in 2019, and his cause wasn’t helped by his long stint on the England sidelines, running drinks during the Sri Lanka Test series.
“You have to work out a balance of playing matches and training. I’d been facing bowlers and facing sidearm, so I’d been getting ready. But was I match-match ready? Probably not. But also, I wouldn’t know if I would be, because the only 50-over games I’ve played is against Pakistan, my debut, and against Sri Lanka for England A, because I’ve been lucky enough to play in the Hundred.
“It’s not something I’m going to get into because, I love the Hundred. I think it’s the best format that we’ve produced in the country. Test cricket’s obviously incredible, and it’s always the pinnacle. But for people that don’t have five days spare watching, you’re telling me the Hundred’s not the best thing? Cricket in England will have to change, and I feel like it will. But I also feel like I don’t know how long 50-over is going to last.”
Nothing’s going to change in a hurry, however, so Cox simply has to be ready to hit the ground running next week, when Essex face Surrey in a tasty Championship opener. He will not, however, be ready to keep wicket in red-ball cricket just yet – a setback which further dents his value to England should they be looking at options for their four-day Test against Zimbabwe in May.
He knows, however, that he just has to keep his frustrations under wraps, and trust in the processes that have got him noticed previously.
“I got close enough once before, so I don’t need to do anything different,” he says. “They make you feel a part of it, that’s just Baz’s way, though I don’t think I ever felt at ease as such… I was absolutely bricking it before the warm-up game [in New Zealand], just knowing that I’d have Joe Root standing to my right, Brooky and Duckett waffling and giggling at each other, talking about golf, and Stokes at mid-off looking at me. But it was absolutely incredible.
“Everyone’s human, they go through the same emotions, the same ups and downs, all that sort of stuff. People are going to have dips, but for the good players, they’re only a couple of innings. I hope I hit the ground running, and I can’t see why I wouldn’t. I’ve prepared as best I could for the season to start. If it started tomorrow, I’d be ready.”