Tom Curran has come in as a replacement for Steve Finn. (File)
Tom Curran has been named as Steve Finn’s replacement for the Ashes that begins on November 23. Finn has been ruled out of the all-important tour Down Under with a knee injury. He sustained the injury while batting in the nets in Perth on the first day of practice. He was given an injection to try and ease the pain, but the injury has been diagnosed as torn cartilage to rule him out completely.
Curran, 22, hasn’t played Test cricket yet but has debuted for England in T20I and ODIs last summer where he impressed the management with his pace and aggressive attitude. He finished with five wickets in T20s against South Africa and even bagged the big wicket of Chris Gayle as his first ODI scalp.
In first-class cricket, Curran has taken 171 wickets in 51 matches for Surrey while averaging nearly 35 in the last County Championship. He can also bat with a decent average of 17 in first-class cricket.He will fly out to Australia on Wednesday (November 8) and has been picked ahead of the likes of Liam Plunkett, Mark Wood and Tom Helm. He joins Craig Overton and Jake Ball as the three bowlers vying for the fourth seamers spot in the Ashes. Ball, the only one who has played Test cricket so far, made a good show of himself in the first warm-up and is a leading contender to get a call-up.
The injured Finn will return to England in the next 48 hours where he will seek advice from a knee specialist to ascertain whether he needs to go under the knife. It comes as a further disappointment for Finn who was sent home early from 2013-14 tour of Australia having been deemed “unselectable” and was dropped midway through the 2010-11 Ashes. He had come in as a replacement for Ben Stokes who is currently in England awaiting the end of police investigation into his brawl in Bristol.
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