“The biggest thing is not to get too ahead of myself,” he says. “I read something on the internet last night that said I could be an England Lions player this winter. That’s too much. I’m still 17. I’ve only played three championship games.” Sorry, Reece.
But while Essex take the field on Tuesday, Topley is preparing to take AS Levels in media studies, sport studies and PE.
You might mischievously point out that they sound very much like the subject choices of a young man with his career already lined up. But there will be no slacking in lessons, no wistful staring out of the window at the playing fields. Not while his father is a teacher there.
Don Topley was an Essex player for a decade, as well as the coach of Zimbabwe, before retiring in 1994 and moving into education. Now, though, he is the very embodiment of a proud parent.
“Oh, he’s very able,” Don says. “From the age of dot, he’s always played sport. He represented Essex under nines, captained them. He’s a very talented rugby player, football player...”
“Shhh,” says Reece, sighing at his dad’s immodesty.“He won’t say, but he is.”
Standing at 6ft 7in with size 13 feet, Reece’s progress has not gone unnoticed.
The England and Wales Cricket Board snapped him up for its fast bowling programme at the age of 13, and for the past two years the England team have invited him to Loughborough so they can practise batting against left-arm pace.
You might remember, a couple of years ago, a 15-year-old lad being conked on the head and being taken to hospital as a result of a flying Kevin Pietersen straight drive. That kid was Reece Topley.
“He ended up in Leicester Hospital,” Don remembers. “He was about 6ft 5in and he was in a children’s ward. The beds were too small.”
But Reece has never been one to be cowed by distinguished company.
His first Test net wicket, at the age of 14, was Alastair Cook, clean bowled at the Essex indoor school. Cook responded by breaking the bowler’s finger with a crunching drive the very next over. Now the two share a dressing room.
“I just try and pick his brains now and then,” Reece says. “But to be honest, I do that with all of them. People like Matt Walker and Dave Masters are very experienced county players.”
After the game against Northamptonshire at the weekend, Reece sought out Chaminda Vaas, one of the great left-arm fast bowlers, to ask for advice.
That, if anything, is the most exciting thing about Topley.
It is not just his talent, which is considerable, but the fact that despite his tender years, he has already developed the mentality of an elite sportsman — the ambition, the hunger, the surpassing desire for improvement, for new tricks.
Don reveals that Reece is working on an away-swinger as well, although he will not be unveiling it for Essex just yet. Instead, it is quivering school batsmen who will be facing England’s brightest young fast bowling hope for now.
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