England fast-track 18-year-old Thomas Rew for Australia white-ball tour
England have called up 18-year-old Thomas Rew for their white-ball tour of Australia next month. The Somerset wicketkeeper-batter — a player who both keeps wicket and bats — is one of four uncapped players in the T20 squad. Harry Brook will captain both the ODI and T20 sides across three ODIs and five T20s, BBC Sport reported.
The tour starts with the first ODI in Perth on 13 November. The T20 leg, the short 20-over format, opens at the Melbourne Cricket Ground on 21 November and finishes in Canberra on 2 December. The other T20s are in Gold Coast, Brisbane and Sydney.
Rew is the headline pick. He captained England Under-19s to the World Cup final earlier this year and scored two centuries in four first-class appearances for Somerset last summer. He turns 19 on 29 November. If he plays in Australia he would be the youngest man to play for England against Australia, and the third-youngest England men's player overall after Rehan Ahmed and Brian Close, The Guardian reported.
He is not the only new face. Hampshire fast bowler Eddie Jack, 21, has earned his first England call-up and is one of only three specialist quicks in the T20 group. His middle name is Vaughan, after former England captain Michael Vaughan.
There are comebacks and absences too. Jacob Bethell returns after a knee injury that has kept him out since July. Jos Buttler misses the tour after hamstring surgery. Ben Duckett will sit out the T20s to prepare for the Test trip to South Africa that follows. Fast bowler Brydon Carse has not been recalled.
The make-up of the squads shows the longer view. Jofra Archer, Josh Tongue, Gus Atkinson and Sonny Baker will play the ODIs — games of 50 overs per side — before joining the Test party. Brook, Jordan Cox and Bethell are set to play both white-ball series and then link up with the Test squad. Henry Crocombe and James Coles carry over from the tri-series in Pakistan in October, for which Archer was rested.
England's three-Test series in South Africa starts only a week after the Australia tour ends. The ODIs in Australia are also early build-up to next year's World Cup in southern Africa.
What makes this stand out is the family thread. Rew's older brother James made his England Test debut against New Zealand at The Oval in June. Now Thomas could follow him onto the international stage in Australia.
