Staffordshire starlet Theo Wylie earns England call-up

Wylie, from Rugeley, came through the junior ranks at Staffordshire and played for Moddershall & Oulton Cricket Club, near Stone, before progressing to join Warwickshire’s academy.

The Shrewsbury School pupil has also been playing club cricket for Shifnal as well as minor counties with Shropshire last season.

The all-rounder made a stunning breakthrough in the summer, scoring a stunning 150 for a junior England invitational XI against Australia under-19s in August.

He then followed that up with a blistering 111 from 76 balls against Ireland a week later.

That form has seen the 17-year-old rewarded with a place on the plane to India next month for a quadrangular series against India U19s A, India U19s B and Bangladesh U19s from November 4-29.

The series will provide the final competitive preparation for the Young Lions ahead of the 2024 ICC Men’s U19 World Cup, which will be staged in Colombo, Sri Lanka, in the new year.

England men’s under-19 head coach, Mike Yardy, said: “Touring India at any level is challenging, which why it is so valuable to be able to expose our best young players to these experiences at under-19 level.

“We expect both the India and Bangladesh U19 teams to be very strong, as India showed when they beat us in the final of the most recent ICC U19 World Cup last year.

“So this is a huge opportunity for the 17 players who have been selected, especially with the next U19 World Cup following this tour in January 2024.”

Wylie is joined by fellow Warwickshire Academy starlets Tazeem Ali and Hamza Shaikh.

n Warwickshire's Chris Woakes believes home advantage stacks the odds in India’s favour at the World Cup but insists his England side are motivated to “knock them off their perch”. The last three editions of the tournament have all gone the way of the host nations, with India lifting their last global title in Mumbai in 2011, followed by Australia in Melbourne in 2015 and England at Lord’s four years ago. But Woakes, who was part of Eoin Morgan’s triumphant team in 2019 and is looking for a repeat performance, is not overawed.

“It’s an incredibly tough challenge to win in India. Naturally, I think the sub-continental teams will feel more at home with the conditions,” he said.

“That makes it extremely hard for us to knock them off their perch, so to speak. But we’ve got the squad and the players to be able to compete. People have looked at us for a while and we’ve had a little bit of a target on our back as a white-ball team, around the world.

“It’s a tough competition to win isn’t it? Especially here. But we’ll give it a good crack. We’re taking it each game as it comes.

“Naturally, people have got expectations of us and we’ve certainly got our own expectations of ourselves.”