Issy Wong’s Ashes absence reflects the reality of her England standing, but not her public image

When Issy Wong took an iconic hat trick in the WPL Eliminator four months ago, Jon Lewis was one of the first people she sought out after the game. He was the head coach of UP Warriorz, the team whose batters she had just decimated. Two months earlier, he hadn’t included her in his squad for the T20 World Cup. However, it wasn’t his approval that Wong was after.

“His son was on tour with us in the West Indies,” said Wong. “He came up to me one day and said, ‘Wongi, have you ever got a hat-trick?’ I said, ‘no, I haven’t actually’; and he said, ‘oh, you’re not very good then’.

“So I said to Lewy after the game, can you ask George if I’m any good yet? He sent me a message a few days later saying, ‘George says you’re not rubbish anymore.’ I’ll take that.”

While she might have persuaded Lewis Jr, the England head coach was not as convinced. When his side won the second and third Ashes T20Is in front of record crowds at the Kia Oval and Lord’s, Wong was running the drinks around the boundary. This year, she hasn’t been selected in an England side in any format. Her absence is completely at odds with the place she holds in the public’s consciousness of women’s cricketers in England.

When Wong made her Test debut last year, the fairytale of her budding career was at its height. She was a Chance to Shine graduate who had been in the crowd as a teenager for England’s 2017 triumph at Lord’s, and a golden child of the success of the women’s Hundred.

That Test marked her as the first cricketer of Chinese descent to play international cricket for England. Above all, she was the embodiment of a new generation of women who had grown up and entered cricket during the professional era, and who could expect more from their careers than those who had gone before.

In the first edition of the Hundred in the summer before her Test debut, Wong had burst onto the scene as one of the standout young stars of the competition. The Hundred had given her a perfect platform on which to launch her career. Her outgoing personality suited the social media-heavy marketing around competition, as did her overtly stated ambition to be the fastest bowler in the world.

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That edition of the tournament needed individual personalities on which to build its success. Wong was the perfect Gen Z fire-brand to capitalise on that fact: rockets and snippets rolled into one. Thus began the formation of a potentially lucrative brand.

Over the following year, podcast appearances and regular interviews with grabbable quotes have expanded her profile. As well as taking on more traditional roles as a pundit on both radio and TV, she has delved into her family’s history of espionage on Tailenders and solved a Rubik’s cube in seconds on the boundary edge in front of the Sky cameras. These have all added up to giving Wong a standing in world cricket that no one else with fewer than 15 international caps can claim.

To clarify: there’s nothing wrong with actively building your brand, in a world where opportunities off the field are increasing at a similar rate they are on it. Despite the expansion of the professional game, all the caveats of top-level sport still apply. An injury at the wrong time can cut any career short. You only have to look at Alex Hartley, a World Cup winner in 2017, now taking a break from playing altogether, but having carved out a media presence outside of the traditional pathways to claim the opportunities on offer.

It can help on the field too. It was Wong’s brand that arguably helped win her a place at the inaugural WPL, ahead of more established internationals; and by the end of the tournament, she had reaped the rewards. Such an approach might bring pressure, but that only matters if a player is unable to handle it, and there is evidence that Wong thrives under the weight of her standing.

But as her international career stands right now, Wong’s image is not one that matches up with reality. In terms of pace alone and the perception of Wong being one of the fastest bowlers in the world, she has yet to deliver on her 80mph promise and has struggled for consistency in her speeds.

In her nine T20I matches to date, she has taken seven wickets, failed to register in the wickets column on four occasions, and hasn’t played an ODI since September last year.

Having been the leader of the much-lauded new cohort of England fast bowlers, others are now starting to get the better of her in the selection race.

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Lauren Filer was chosen ahead of her for the Ashes Test match, despite Wong being the incumbent. Last year, Filer was bowling in the low 70s in regional cricket. Against Australia, she was rapid. Out of nowhere, she was troubling the likes of Ellyse Perry and Beth Mooney for pace and looked England’s most dangerous bowler.

The worry for Wong is that Filer could be the first of a bunch. After that Test match, Lewis was asked whether there were other bowlers around the country who could force their way into England’s reckoning by putting on an extra few yards of pace.

“There’s a few,” he said. “I’m not going to name them because I don’t want to put them under any pressure, but there are some girls out there who can bowl quite quickly, or have the potential to bowl quite quickly… There are definitely some bowlers out there who can bowl a lot quicker than they are at the moment, and we’re looking really closely at who those bowlers are and how we can develop them.”

If Lewis delivers on that promise of increasing the speeds of several bowlers not currently in England’s setup, Wong’s own point of difference will be diminished further than it already has been. Her status as England’s fastest bowler looks further away than it was even a few months ago: In three Charlotte Edwards Cup matches for Central Sparks this summer, her seven overs went at 10.14 apiece.

However, just because Wong isn’t yet the level of bowler she is sometimes portrayed as, shouldn’t obscure what she is: a promising young fast bowler making her way in an increasingly competitive world. There have been glimpses of what she could become – England’s final group stage match in the Commonwealth Games against New Zealand springs to mind. There, she bowled in breathtaking tandem with Katherine Sciver-Brunt, varying her speeds to take two wickets in her three overs which conceded ten runs. She still find places in England squads, even if she’s not quite making XIs.

The explosive end to her Women’s Premier league campaign was another encapsulation of what she has to offer. That she claimed six wickets in her first eight games, often failing to complete her full quota, demonstrates how she is a work in progress. But the nine she snared in her last three shows her potential. And that three of those came in three balls to fire Mumbai Indians into the final, with the clip viewed over 300,000 times on Twitter, shows that, when everything fits together, she can be a captivating, compelling cricketer.

Before this series started, Wong delivered the latest in a string of punchy, quotable lines, dipping her toe into the Ashes phony war as she did so. “Let’s see if you’re as good as you were five years ago…” she said of Australia. “I think this is a great time to play them.”

This is the brash bravado Wong has made a name out of, and, for the moment, England are proving her right. The series is still live heading into the ODIs, and Wong is in the squad. Maybe now it’s time to see if she is as good as we’re told she is.