The 6ft 7in English left-arm fast bowler who wants to emulate Mitchell Starc

Josh Hull is massive. He fills the room even when sitting down so you can see potential when this farmer’s son from Cambridge says he wants to emulate Mitchell Starc.

Like Starc, Hull is a left-arm fast bowler who swings it. At 6ft 7in, and unsure whether he has stopped growing at the age of 19, he has the physical presence to bowl quickly.

He was name-checked last week by Rob Key when the England director gave an interview to Telegraph Sport, and sources say the selectors checked him out at Leicestershire last summer when they considered picking a young squad for an end-of-season white-ball series against Ireland.

It was felt it was too early for Hull but fast bowlers have a habit of bursting onto the scene and rapidly finding their way into an England squad, so a good start to the summer for Leicestershire could see him earn an opportunity this summer, with evolving the fast-bowling attack top of Key’s list. It is good timing, too, with Key saying in his interview last week he is less bothered by how many wickets bowlers take but wants “to know how hard you are running in, how hard you are hitting the pitch and are you able to sustain pace”.

“Yeah, I read that and it was nice to hear,” says Hull, who has been a professional for only a year. Those being obtuse would say wickets are all that counts but what Key was stressing was that at 78mph you can dismiss plenty in county cricket but it will not work at Test level. Josh Tongue took a five-fer on Test debut last summer but was picked with an average in the 40s for Worcestershire.

Hull made his mark in the final of the One-Day Cup last summer, holding his nerve in the final over and successfully defending eight runs as Leicestershire scraped home to beat Hampshire. Proving his nerve that way led to him being picked up in the Hundred draft by the Manchester Originals last week.

He bowls around the 82mph mark and needs to add pace but has worked on that this winter in the nets at Grace Road, trying to use his front side more, be better aligned and swing it more consistently. He reckons he reached 87mph in the final and can go further. Hull needs to work on his physique to become more resilient to injury – he will miss the first couple of championship matches with a side strain – and said: “I will get stronger and try to put on a few more yards, that is the plan.”

Being a left-armer makes him more unique. Since Ryan Sidebottom retired in 2010, Sam Curran is the only left-arm seamer to play Test cricket for England and he was not quick. With Key saying he wants a “battery” of fast bowlers for the next Ashes tour, there is plenty of incentive to take punts on players. “Certainly Mitchell Starc is someone I like to emulate. And look up to. He is of similar height, bowls at 90mph and swings it,” says Hull.

It is in his genes. His grandmother’s brother, Grenville Wilson, was a left-arm seamer for Worcestershire in the 1950s and his gran Georgina has been a big influence on his cricket. “She loves cricket. She always tells me that as a kid she would play with her brother and bowl at him. She did play a bit of women’s cricket for Worcestershire, I think, so she was the one from a young age who would babysit me and throw balls at me in the garden,” he says.

It was Georgina who had a net installed in a barn on Hull’s father’s farm near Oundle that kept him and his brother Ollie active during lockdown. Ollie is also at the Leicestershire academy and on the books at Northampton Saints rugby club, playing for their under-18s at the moment.

Hull is the first lockdown cricketer in some ways, and was lucky he had the space to play on the farm to keep his cricket going at a formative time aged 16. It helped push him away from playing second row and towards cricket. “Growing up, being a rugby player was more what I dreamed of but then when I was 15 I broke my arm,” he says. “That meant I missed the following season but I could play cricket because I broke my right arm so I could still bowl with my left. Then the following year after that was lockdown so I missed another rugby season. That is when cricket then became the focus. Cricket went well so I carried it on.”

Hull went to Stamford School, where he was coached by former England bowler Dean Headley, who recommended him to Phillip DeFreitas at Leicestershire. After a year in the academy, he made his first-team debut last summer and did well in white-ball cricket, taking 17 wickets at 24 in the One-Day Cup. Championship cricket was harder, with nine wickets at 62 in six games, but England will look beyond numbers.

“For me, trying to play as much first team in all three formats is the aim,” Hull says. “I have a lot to learn and a long way to go but getting experience will help me a lot. Being selected in the Hundred draft, that will be a great opportunity. They have three or four left-armers in the squad including Paul Walter, who is tall like me, so being able to learn his death plans, slower balls, all that sort of game awareness and tactics stuff will be massive learning for me.”

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