Tilly Corteen-Coleman is England’s newest left-arm spin-bowling prodigy. Less than a year on from finishing school, she’s poised to make her mark on a home T20 World Cup.
Making her international debut in Durham last month, Tilly Corteen-Coleman walked out to bat in a tight spot. As the last batter in with 10 runs needed to win, she and Charlie Dean were all there was rallying against a disappointing defeat in the first match England had played in six months. Having blocked out a few, and even been given the strike by Dean off the second ball of the over, Corteen-Coleman nicked the strike with two runs needed. “I probably wouldn’t have done that in hindsight,” she tells Wisden Women’s Cricket Weekly podcast.
The confidence that saw Corteen-Coleman back herself as a No.11 batter on debut to get an important win over the line is in a large part why Charlotte Edwards decided she needed her in England's T20 World Cup squad. On paper it's a confusing decision. Corteen-Coleman is the third left-arm spinner in the squad, which reduces the possibility for different combinations given England are unlikely to play all three at the same time. She doesn’t deepen their batting lineup, and her track-record of success is as short as you would expect an 18 year old’s to be.
“This year has been my first winter as a full time professional athlete not having to worry about anything else,” says Corteen-Coleman. “I've definitely made some big strides this winter. It was challenging the year before, I didn't play as much as I was hoping for Surrey last year because I was trying to manage school alongside it.”
While juggling her GCSEs two years ago – “I’ve never been someone who loves academics, so when I got the opportunity to play and train during school terms, school went out the window” – Corteen-Coleman made her professional debut for South East Stars, before she was drafted into Southern Brave’s squad for The Hundred by Edwards. She dismissed Meg Lanning on debut, taking a smart catch off her own bowling.
The role of Edwards’ in Corteen-Coleman’s rapid rise cannot be understated. Edwards handed out her first Kent cap as an Under-11 and, a few years later, saw her bowl in a Surrey second XI match against the Southern Vipers Academy. “I instantly saw a girl that looked a little bit like Sophie [Ecclestone], if I’m honest,” said Edwards. “I’ve never met a young girl so mature, so ahead of her years in many ways, but also really skillful.”
It's that maturity and skill, as well as the wickets she has taken in every scenario she's been put in during her short career so far, that informs Edwards' bold decision to catapult Corteen-Coleman in for the World Cup. Equally, for a player so young, she has already had a significant amount of development since she started bowling spin while she was still in primary school.
Having started cricket aged six at her local club, Corteen-Coleman graduated into Kent’s age-group pathway two years later, originally as a seamer. It was only because of a delayed growth spurt that she transitioned to bowling spin.
“I was an absolute shorty,” she says. “I was so small, always the smallest in the friendship group, and I just couldn't get any pace. I was bowling hand grenades, so my U11 coach David Sears tried to get me to [bowl spin]. He explained it to me as an off-cutter, and I started doing that and a couple turned and that was it – I decided I wanted to be a spin bowler. I think we were at a school indoor centre and he was trying to get us to bowl off spin and leg spin, and I liked the off spin. So I stuck with that.
“It definitely didn't come naturally. As a person I'm quite curious, so I was always asking questions and trying to get better. But for a good chunk of the beginning, I definitely wasn't turning the ball. I had a shorter run-up and was bowling slower and calling it spin. As I got older I tried to specialise a bit more and work with different coaches to develop that spin. I'd say I'm still doing that, I've got a lot to work on.”
The teenage years of a player’s development can be messy. As the body develops, natural ability changes, and like a teenager trying on new identities to figure out who they want to be as an adult, players translate that onto the field. For Corteen-Coleman, her path from deciding to bowl off-spin as a 10-year-old has been as smooth as it could have been.
Perhaps some of that is down to having a powerful role-model, crucially visible for her to see on TV, in Sophie Ecclestone. Ecclestone made her England debut at the same time Corteen-Coleman decided she wanted to be a left-arm spinner. It’s not a coincidence the two have similar bowling styles, the characteristics that reminded Edwards of Ecclestone.
“Growing up, she [Ecclestone] was always my idol,” says Corteen-Coleman. “Maybe that's a bit embarrassing to say now I'm in the same team as her, but she probably still is. I love watching her bowl. I love the way she navigates being on the pitch and the decisions she makes.”
Those attributes that Corteen-Coleman has tried to emulate, have brought her success so far. She was the leading uncapped English spin-bowler in The Hundred last year, and was bought by Southern Brave for £105,000 in the auction this year. But, in international cricket, as a close to like-for-like, she’s now in direct competition with Ecclestone for a place.
In their T20Is so far this summer, Linsey Smith has locked herself into England’s World Cup XI as a highly effective powerplay weapon. While Ecclestone has appeared slightly off the boil, having been taken down by Sophie Devine before middling returns against India, it’s unlikely England would go into a World Cup without their spin pack-leader. With Charlie Dean a lock as the right-armer and lower-order batter, that squeezes Corteen-Coleman out.
But, it’s unthinkable that Corteen-Coleman’s time in an England shirt during a World Cup won’t come, even if it isn’t this summer.
“Rightly or wrongly, I compare myself to senior players and think – why can't I do that? Why am I not as fast? Why am I not as strong?” she says. “But I also need to take a step back and think, this is my first time as a full time athlete, I've only just finished school, and we're all on our own journeys and that's okay. As long as I'm putting 100 per cent into everything I'm doing, trying to be the best version of myself, I can't control anything else.”
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