Reece Topley tells Essex: Sorry I can't play today - I've got to revise for my exams

“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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Reece Topley, Essex's promising left-arm swing bowler, will benefit from another schooling session

Reece Topley has run in, bowled at around 80mph with his left arm, and swung the ball into right-handers on a full length. For Essex he has taken three wickets against Cambridge, seven against Kent, and five more against Middlesex: 15 wickets, at 17 each, to lead this season’s field.

It won’t stay that way for long. Unlike Adil Rashid and his other rivals to be the leading wicket-taker of this early season, Topley this week has to go back to school — and, as he turned 17 only in February, he is not yet even in his second year of A-levels.

But school, after three consecutive matches in the first fortnight, is no bad place for Topley. He has to be allowed to grow in peace: he is 6ft 4 ins already and well on the way to being a second Bruce Reid, the Australian who was the tallest quick left-armer that international cricket has seen, and he doesn’t need any stress fractures from being over-bowled at this stage. He could do with a bit of work on his action too, as he falls away in delivery and does not maximise his height.

Topley is not alone either. This spring has seen English youth being given its head as seldom if ever before. Another teenaged pace bowler to watch — although in this case right-arm — is Liam Norwell of Gloucestershire, who echoes Andrew Flintoff, at least when he starts his run-up by holding the ball in both hands ahead of him and when he follows through, splaying his feet.

It is by design as much as accident that these local lads are being given a chance. Until recently, if a county had 30 grand to spare, they did not invest in local youth: much easier to get on the phone to an agent in South Africa and sign a tough cookie from Free State who wouldn’t break down, and if he had a British grandparent, so much the better.

But six years ago the England and Wales Cricket Board introduced Performance-related Fee Payments, one of the most sensible decisions they have made. By law, the ECB couldn’t stop the counties filling up their teams with Kolpaks and southern-hemisphere players who somehow acquired European Union passports, but they could incentivise them not to — and now they put between £10 million and £11 million a year into the pot by way of incentives.

At the height of this recession, or whatever the correct euphemism for the British economy being up the creek, most counties don’t need a second invitation to cash in. Selecting players who are qualified for England — preferably under the age of 22 — then getting them into an England side, whatever the format or age-group, gratifies the accountants.

Indeed it actually pays Essex to play Topley, or Gloucestershire to pick Norwell. A county can receive more money from the ECB for picking an English-born teenager than it pays out to that teenager. If a player under 22 plays every game, a county will receive £36,000, and can get away with paying him much less.

You can have too much of a good thing though. Taking a championship five-for in April, as Topley (twice) and Norwell have done, is not the same as bowling 20 overs day-in day-out in August. A county needs old-sweat batsmen and bowlers to hold the side together, as well as gilded youth.

For the moment though the future is bright. England, amazingly, have never produced a left-arm pace bowler who has taken 100 Test wickets. Bill Voce, as in Larwood and Voce, nearly got there — then the Second World War began, and he ended on 98. Ryan Sidebottom had a brilliant 2007-8 — then the injuries set in, and he ended on 79.

A left-arm swinger is gold dust. Chaminda Vaas was Sri Lanka’s pace attack for 15 years; Zaheer Khan carries India’s. The variety of angles that a left-armer can offer — from over and round the wicket — makes one essential in limited-overs death bowling. I couldn’t see England winning the last World Cup, because India do have a batting line-up that deserves the epithet of great, but an attack of Stuart Broad, Tim Bresnan, Graeme Swann and a fit Sidebottom could have taken England to the final.

So the future beckons for Topley, and the present isn’t too bad either, as he bowls a full and old-fashioned length that draws batsmen into the drive, and the Tiflex ball that is used in the second division swings copiously. As he grows stronger, he can develop the plan B of banging it in and pushing the batsman back, as Voce and Sidebottom learned to do. And maybe go one better.

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Reece Topley displays his lofty potential for Essex with seven-wicket match haul on Championship debut

The talking point of the day was the performance of latest Essex ‘find’ Reece Topley, who took five wickets for 46 runs in the Kent second innings to finish with match figures of 29.4-5-114-7 on his championship debut.

The 17-year-old 6ft 7in fast bowler, who attends the Royal Hospital School in Holbrook, is taking examinations next month - and he posed a number of probing questions for a succession of Kent batsmen in this contest which is set for an absorbing conclusion.

Gaining significant swing movement, Topley claimed experienced internationals Geraint Jones and James Tredwell to add to those of Rob Key and Joe Denly on the previous day.

His performance allowed the hosts to dismiss Kent for 238 after the visitors had started the day 146 for three.

and they ended the day needing a further 87 runs to win the season opener but with only four wickets intact.

England players Alastair Cook and Ravi Bopara both played themselves in and seemed set to make the significant contributions that the home side were seeking, before both fell in the 30s.

Ashes hero Cook had timed the ball sweetly to move to 31 with six boundaries, putting on 60 with Billy Godleman before he became the first wicket to fall when trapped leg before wicket on the back foot by James Tredwell.

Bopara treated the crowd to trademark drives on both sides of the wicket and looked in menacing form until, with his score on 39 out of 161, he too was adjudged lbw when undone by a ball from Darren Stevens that kept low.

Stevens collected his third wicket of the innings when he had Tom Westley caught at first slip for 17, before Tim Phillips joined Foster to play out the remaining five overs of the day.

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