Two years ago Jordan Cox lost a Test debut before he had faced a ball, a broken thumb in the buildup taking the cap away from him. When it finally arrived this summer it came at No 7, as a specialist batter drafted in against New Zealand at the Oval with Ben Stokes unavailable. On Wednesday at Headingley the 25-year-old starts again, this time in a position he can barely remember occupying. The Jordan Cox England number three call is the most exposed selection of a new era.
With Jacob Bethell absent through a knee injury, Cox has been told he will bat at first drop for at least the first two matches of the three-Test series against Pakistan – the opening act of Joe Root’s second spell as Test captain, and a job that begins against one of the world’s most precise new-ball operators in Mohammad Abbas.
‘Clarity’s one of the best things in sport’
What Cox seems most grateful for is not the promotion but the plainness of it. The message came from the England selector Marcus North, and it left nothing to interpret.
“Northy didn’t have to go: ‘You’re batting at three in these two Test matches’, but he did. This is 100% – unless I get injured,” Cox told the Guardian at Headingley. “Clarity’s one of the best things in sport.”
North’s instruction was similarly unfussy: keep doing what he has been doing in county cricket, have fun, embrace the challenge. “I don’t think I’ve ever batted three before but I’ve opened for probably two years in county cricket for Kent,” Cox said. “So look, it will be fun, I’m looking forward to it.”
He can be forgiven for forgetting his one previous first-class innings in the position, back in 2019 as an 18-year-old against Nottinghamshire, when Ravichandran Ashwin dismissed him twice.
What the Jordan Cox England number three decision says about the order
Cox has been a thumping presence at No 4 for Essex this season, most emphatically in a 201-ball 204 against Leicestershire in June. Test No 3 is a different trade: half an hour earlier, harder ball, field still up, and Abbas probing away at the top of off stump.
That is why the selection has drawn sceptics. The Telegraph’s verdict – that England are “once again throwing inexperience to the wolves at No 3” – reflects a long-running English discomfort with the slot, one Bethell’s own rapid promotion up the order was supposed to have settled. Cox arrives with two Test innings behind him, 27 and 25, in a match England lost.
The wider context is a side being rebuilt in public. Ollie Pope and Dan Lawrence were recalled alongside Cox for the Pakistan series, Root leads for the 66th time in Tests – a national record, according to BBC Sport – and Marcus Trescothick remains in interim charge with Stephen Fleming’s arrival as head coach still to come.
The Kohli advice he will keep forever
Cox’s steadying influence has come from an unlikely direction. He joined Royal Challengers Bengaluru for the first time this year and, though he did not play a match as they defended their IPL title, he spent months in Virat Kohli’s company. The pair met again in London before his debut at the Oval.
“He was saying: ‘Enjoy the moment. You only get one debut. Just enjoy it and have fun’,” Cox told BBC Sport. “Family and friends, everything they have worked hard for, every time they have come to a game to support you, show them something why they have done all that sacrifice for you.”
He intends to carry it into Wednesday morning. “I’ll keep it forever, I think. He’s someone that I’ll text if I’m ever feeling down or need a bit of help. He’s always at the end of the phone.”
England have given Cox the one thing a young batter in an unfamiliar role can use: certainty. Whether that is enough against Abbas with a hard ball at Headingley is the first real question of the Root era.
