Player Profile
Tom Hartley - England spinner. Let’s hope that by the end of the 2024 summer, we can add trophy winner to that as well.
From September 2023 to March 2024, the left-arm spinner’s career changed dramatically and undoubtedly for the better.
In September, he made his England debut in a pair of home ODIs against Ireland, firstly at Trent Bridge and then Bristol. He went wicketless and hit a best of 12 with the bat.
Then, having won selection for the early 2024 Test tour of India, he was handed a debut in January’s series opener at Hyderabad and made one heck of an impact. He claimed nine wickets in the match, including a career best 7-62 in the second innings, as England fought back from a first-innings deficit to claim a famous win.
He went on to finish with 22 wickets in a series which saw India fight back to win it 4-1. Further hauls of three wickets and four wickets came the way of the 24-year-old who described that couple of months as a “dream come true”. He finished as England’s leading wicket-taker.
Before that tour, Hartley had played only 20 first-class matches, taking 40 wickets, perhaps his development more obvious in the shorter form of the game having taken 68 wickets in 82 career T20 appearances for the likes of Lancashire and the Hundred team, Manchester Originals.
Hartley has also emerged as a useful and powerful lower order batter, with two first-class fifties, including a best of 73, to his name.
Prior to his senior international debut, Hartley had played for the England Lions, touring Sri Lanka with them in early 2023.
Ormskirk-born, Hartley claimed 28 wickets in all cricket for Lancashire in 2022 and 26 in 2023.
He has two career first-class five-fors to his name, including his 7-62 for England. The first came for the Red Rose in late 2022 - a season-ending Division One win over already crowned champions Surrey at Emirates Old Trafford when claimed eight wickets in the match with 5-52 in the second innings.
He claimed 17 wickets in the 2022 Vitality Blast as Lancashire reached the final, only to be beaten by Hampshire. He claimed seven two-wicket hauls in that campaign. In that same summer, he finished second in the Championship and was a runner-up in the Hundred with the Manchester Originals.
Continuing the theme of near misses, he was also a beaten finalist at the end of 2022 in the Abu Dhabi T10 League.
Hartley - a second-team T20 Trophy winner in 2018 - made his first-team bows in 2020, firstly in the Bob Willis Trophy and then in the Blast.
Since his Blast debut, he has been a near ever-present for Lancashire in T20 cricket and went beyond 50 career appearances in that format for the county in 2023.
He will start 2024 eight wickets away from 50 in T20 cricket for the Lightning (he has a best of 4-16 to his name).
When he reaches that milestone, he will become the 10th player to do so for Lancashire.
He is a tall bowler with excellent control and is the son of former runner Bill, who won 4x400m gold at the European Championships in 1974. He was also a Commonwealth Games silver medalist in the same discipline in Christchurch that year.
During that aforementioned second-team T20 success in 2018, Tom claimed 3-12 in the final victory over Essex at Arundel.
He is hoping to learn a huge amount from new overseas signing Nathan Lyon, the Australian spin great, through the 2024 summer. But he would like nothing more than to be celebrating a trophy or two with the experienced offie.