Sam Cook selected for England Test squad as injured Chris Woakes misses out | England cricket team

Sam Cook has been selected for England’s one-off Test against Zimbabwe later this month – reward not only for his excellence in the County Championship but also a commendable, unwavering desire to play the longest format.

Aged 27 and having finessed a truckload of wickets for Essex at just 18 runs apiece, Cook could have been forgiven for wondering if the call would ever come. During the most recent winter, with six-figure offers from three different franchise tournaments, he could also have been forgiven for putting his bank balance first.

Instead, Cook committed to playing for Andrew Flintoff’s Lions team in Australia and now a maiden Test call-up is the upshot. Chris Woakes misses out, his season yet to begin due to an ankle niggle, and so Cook is poised to take the new ball when England’s summer gets under way on 22 May with a four-day Test at Trent Bridge.

No Woakes means Gus Atkinson is the senior bowler, only a year on from his breakout summer and with 11 caps to his name. Matt Potts (10 caps) is next. Extra pace comes from Josh Tongue, whose heartening return for Nottinghamshire after a 17-month fitness battle has coincided with injuries to Mark Wood, Brydon Carse and Olly Stone.

Another on the comeback trail is captain Ben Stokes, whose ability to operate as the fourth seamer is the chief unknown. The all-rounder, 33, has not played since hamstring surgery at the start of the year and, as well as Zimbabwe, he may also turn out for the Lions in one of their two four-day matches against India A in early June.

Seamers aside, England’s squad is largely a case of keeping faith with incumbents. Zak Crawley holds his spot despite a personal horror show in New Zealand last December, while Ollie Pope has the chance to reassert himself at No 3 after keeping wicket during that 2-1 series win and watching Jacob Bethell sparkle at first drop.

Bethell is at the Indian Premier League – his Royal Challengers Bangalore side are likely to make the playoffs that overlap with the Zimbabwe Test – and so the spare batter is Jordan Cox, whose broken thumb before the first Test in New Zealand presented that chance. Shoaib Bashir, the stripling off-spinner whose returns lurch wildly, is another to get the backing of the panel.

Cook’s selection says a couple of things. Firstly, domestic returns are still a consideration despite the likes of Bashir and Josh Hull jumping the queue last year based on raw attributes. Second is that pace, while desirable at international level, is not a total non-negotiable given Cook operates in the low 80s mph on the speed gun.

The right-armer is rather a medium-fast “nipper” in the mould of South Africa’s Vernon Philander or Mohammad Abbas of Pakistan, presenting an upright seam with relentless accuracy. The laws of physics mean a cricket ball cannot actually gather pace off a pitch but Cook, like those two magicians, hurries opponents by getting it to kiss the surface.

These skills could easily have seen Cook pigeon-holed as a Dukes ball specialist in England but during the Kookaburra rounds last summer he claimed a 10-wicket haul against Nottinghamshire at Trent Bridge. For Rob Key, who still presides over selection, it was the final tick in the box. The phrase “proper bowler” gets used here.

Zimbabwe at home is one thing but the question is whether these skills translate to the visit of India later this summer, or the Ashes tour that follows. As regards the latter, a Kookaburra with a seam that has stayed prominent for longer in recent seasons, and seen batting averages in Australia come down, is cause for optimism.