JAMES Rew returned home recently from a winter during which he has played Grade Cricket in Sydney played for England Under 19s against Australia before being called up for the England Lions against Sri Lanka.

“It has been a very exciting time for me and I never thought at the start of the winter that Id end up playing with the Lions so tom have that experience was pretty unbelievable, “ the 19 year old wicket-keeper batsman said.

“I started off in Sydney playing Grade Cricket which was great for me and I had such a good time and met some good people. Playing club cricket is slightly different to playing county cricket here, and some of the bowlers you face aren’t quite as good so you have to be really patient and dig in and work really hard to just stay out there and score as many runs as you can.

“Everyone thinks that the wickets in Sydney are fast and bouncy but you get some slow wickets at club level and a lot of them are pretty good, but they’re not as everyone thinks that Aussie wickets are going to play. Whilst I was there I I played against some high quality players, some of them had played in the Big Bash.

How did the England Lions call up come about?

“I wasn’t expecting it at all. I had a zoom call with one of the England selectors and one of the Under 19 selectors but I didn’t put two and two together to begin with, but then when they said that I wouldn’t be playing in the Under 19s white ball stuff and going to Sri Lanka instead I was very surprised but extremely excited .

“Then after the two Under 19 Tests ended I flew from Brisbane straight to Colombo with Jacob Bethell . I absolutely loved it and there were some unbelievable players on that tour and it was great to be able to pick the minds of those people. To have Ian Bell as the batting coach was so good as well."

What was he hoping of this coming summer?

“Of course it would be unbelievable if I got picked again for the Lions this summer, but I’m going to try and focus on the start of the County Championship season and see how it goes from there.”