Durham CCC opening batsman Keaton Jennings has received his first call-up to the England Test squad.
Jennings will join up with the senior side, including fellow Durham man Ben Stokes, on 5 December ahead of the final two Test matches in India.
The 24-year-old replaces Lancashire’s Haseeb Hameed after the young opener suffered a tour-ending finger injury during the third Test.
He will fly to India from Dubai, where he had been part of the England Lions tour, after captaining the Lions in their first match tomorrow against the UAE tomorrow. He may also play in Saturday’s second game.
If selected in the Mumbai Test, which begins a week tomorrow, he would become the ninth Durham player to appear in a Test for England.
And it would be no less than a richly deserved reward after a record-breaking season at county level.
The left-hander finished as the Specsavers County Championship’s highest run-scorer in 2016, becoming the first Durham batsman to top the scoring in the competition’s history
He amassed 1,548 runs at an average of 64.50 – with a top score of 221 not out under intense pressure against Yorkshire in June.
That included no less than seven centuries, a Durham record in a single first-class season, while he turned two of those into double centuries – only twice did he pass 50 and fail to reach three figures.
In April he became the third batsman to score hundreds in either innings of a match & eventually finished 52 runs shy of Michael Di Venuto’s record in a single season.
But Jennings’ success was not confined to the red ball game as he finished with exactly 2,000 runs across all three forms of the game.
He captained the side in a number of One-Day fixtures & scored 88 in the NatWest T20 Blast Final against the Northants Steelbacks, the highest score at a Finals Day.
It culminated in him sweeping no less than five awards at the club’s Player of the Year dinner.