Rob Key cut a slightly self-conscious figure as he joined his team for their pre-training football game of keepy-uppies at the start of yet another new Test era.

There would have been long odds at the start of the summer on the England and Wales Cricket Board’s (ECB) director of men’s cricket being the last man standing among a Bazball management trio that included Ben Stokes and Brendon McCullum.

But there was Key, hands kept mainly in pockets, on the Headingley outfield on Monday alongside the new (and old) captain, Joe Root, whose first step in his second spell in charge was to dismantle the curfew that did so much to bring down the old captain and coach.

There, too, among the first group of players to join in the game of ‘pig’ with their boss was Jordan Cox, who will have a golden opportunity against Pakistan on Wednesday to ignite a Test career that has already endured a couple of false starts.

Cox will bat at No 3 for at least the first two Tests in this three-match series in what is, in effect, a reversal of fortunes. He replaces the injured Jacob Bethell, the man who stepped in when Cox broke a thumb ahead of what would have been his Test debut in New Zealand late in 2024.

Jordan Cox and Emilio Gay prepare to go into the nets (Gareth Copley/Getty Images)

There was another near miss when Cox had to pull out of the squad to face Zimbabwe last year after suffering a side strain before that debut finally came earlier this summer against New Zealand at the Oval when he did enough at No 7 to earn what could now become an extended run.

“I’ve been told the first two Tests are mine at three — as long as I don’t get injured, that is — and to enjoy myself and have fun,” Cox told reporters after England had gathered for their second Test series of the summer and their first under Root and interim coach Marcus Trescothick.

“That’s four innings where I can try to, hopefully, win a Test or help towards winning a Test. It is awesome to be England’s No 3 and it’s an honour to bat there. I’ve had to bide my time but I’ve got this opportunity now and need to try to take it with both hands.”

Cox, 25, was clearly hit hard mentally as well as physically by that ill-timed injury in New Zealand. His father, Stafford, was just about to make the long journey to watch his son make his Test debut when he received a phone call that stopped him in his tracks.

“I was sitting at home with my bags packed at about 10pm when my wife said Jordan was ringing me,” Stafford Cox told the BBC’s Test Match Special during his son’s Test debut. “I said: ‘He can’t be, he’s playing in the warm-up game in Queenstown’. But Jordan was on the phone and he said: ‘You’d better hold off. I’m in an ambulance and I think I’ve broken my thumb’.

“He actually found that very hard to come back from emotionally because he’d built it up so much and it was everything he’d strived for. I just told him he would get his chance when the time was right.”

Jordan Cox eventually made his England Test debut at the Oval against New Zealand (Gareth Copley/Getty Images)

Cox took up the story at Headingley. “It was a freak accident but there were definitely thoughts of, ‘I’m never going to play Test cricket for England now’,” he said on Monday. “After that it felt like I had come down from a massive high to such a low and I started to get annoyed about simple things. It might have been mis-spelling a text to my family or something silly like that.

“I really had to look at myself in the mirror and vowed to enjoy my time off with my girlfriend. I had to think: ‘This isn’t life-changing. I’m not going to die tomorrow. The sun will still come up in the morning’. I just had to move on.”

If anything the setback helped the maturing process of a gifted batter, outstanding fielder and decent wicketkeeper who was known for having perhaps a little too much confidence and self-assurance in his younger days at Kent.

That process was further helped two years ago by Cox’s move to Essex, where he averages 68 in first-class cricket, and the influence of a particularly famous friend in Virat Kohli. “In my eyes he’s the pinnacle of cricket,” said Cox of his IPL team-mate at Royal Challengers Bengaluru. “Virat has been at the top of all three formats for such a long period of time.

“He can be crazy on the field but off it he’s one of the nicest guys you’ll meet. He made me think, how can I be like that? How can I be really aggressive on the field then, when I come off it, everyone says: ‘He’s a great bloke’?”

The Indian great Virat Kohli playing against England at Lord’s in July (Glyn Kirk/AFP via Getty Images)

It was Kohli whom Cox visited at his England base in Notting Hill, London ahead of that Test debut at the Oval in June. “He told me to enjoy the moment,” said Cox. ”And to repay my family for all they’ve done for me.

“Virat is someone I’ve looked up to and I’ve managed to spend some time with. He’s someone I text if I’m ever feeling down or need a bit of help. He’s always on the end of the phone. He always looks to help others before himself.”

Thirteen of the enlarged 16-man England squad went through their paces at Headingley before the unusual sight of rain — even in Leeds — forced them indoors. They included Ollie Robinson, whose wife has just given birth to their first child, but not the trio of Ben Duckett, Josh Tongue and Gus Atkinson, who were all involved in the final of the Hundred at Lord’s on Sunday night.

They will all be at Headingley on Tuesday when England will decide if Tongue and Atkinson are sufficiently prepared and then finalise the makeup of a bowling attack that will be spearheaded by Jofra Archer.

But one man certain to play is Cox — as long as he doesn’t have any more unforeseen accidents that test his newfound maturity between now and Wednesday.

His youth is a huge talking point as is the fact that he’ll be pitting his wits against some very experienced operators in the months and years ahead. He has signed an initial two-year deal. The former Everton player, and Pocognoli’s previous coaching side-back, Kevin Mirallas is likely to join him in Scotland.

“I like to do things in a different way,” said Pocognoli. “I don’t believe there is one way to be the best in life. Not only about football, but generally in life. Did the Scotland challenge [reflect] my identity and personality? I think that, yes, and that’s why I was curious to go through the meetings.

“I’m maybe one of the youngest managers for the job but I was also one of the youngest managers in Belgium.

“Everybody was surprised. And at the end, it was a happy end. And then I continued the journey in Monaco and today I’m here.”

Belgium was Union Saint-Gilloise, who use the same data analytics company as Hearts, and the remarkable story of their first league title win in 90 years. That was 2024-25 and Pocognoli was in charge. He was 37 when he got the job and delivered massively at the first time of asking.

USG had been a process, though. For context, they didn’t go from nobodies to champions in Pocognoli’s one season at the helm. They’d been knocking on the door for three seasons, under different managers, before he arrived; second, third and second in the three campaigns prior to his elevation from coaching at underage level. In 2023 and 2024 under different managers they missed out on the title by a point. Pocognoli was the historic one who got them over the line.

How did it happen? “Well, it starts with people who believe in you, give you the opportunity to shine,” he explained. USG are a curious case. They have had four different managers in recent seasons and all of them left the club quickly, poached away to supposedly bigger things, only to fail.

Felice Mazzu left USG for Anderlecht, Karel Geraerts went to Schalke and then Reims. Alexander Blessin went to St Pauli. Pocognoli, himself, left for Monaco. All of them were a disappointment. It begs the question and adds to the suspense about these managers being products of a system at USG. Can they operate successfully outside of that system?

The Premier League has observed and evaluated ball chip technology in competitive matches as the league considers its possible future use.

Connected Ball technology uses a sensor embedded inside the ball to identify the precise moment it is touched, providing officials with additional data for situations such as on offsides, handballs, deflections and double touches.

Sources briefed on the matter told The Athletic that Premier League representatives observed the technology at the FIFA Women’s Champions Cup in London in January and at the 2025 Wings Cup youth tournament at RB Leipzig, where it was used with Puma balls. The system has not yet been trialled during a Premier League fixture.

Spain’s La Liga will become the first national professional football competition to deploy Connected Ball technology across every match this season. La Liga’s system uses radio-frequency sensors developed by German technology company KINEXON Sports and integrated into Puma match balls, with data transmitted to around 12 antennas installed at each stadium.

Sources added that there are no immediate plans for the introduction of Connected Ball technology in the Premier League, where the existing semi-automated offside system can determine when the ball is played without an internal sensor, but the league will continue to monitor its use elsewhere.

The Premier League’s existing system relies on optical tracking, using up to 30 cameras around each stadium to follow the ball and thousands of data points on every player before suggesting a kick point and automatically generating offside lines for VAR.

When the system was introduced in April 2025, the Premier League said a sensor inside the ball was not required because its optical tracking could determine when the ball had been played. A chip inside the ball would provide a separate measurement of that moment of contact.

Connected Ball technology has previously been used with Adidas balls at major international tournaments including the 2022 and 2026 men’s World Cups, the 2023 Women’s World Cup, Euro 2024, Women’s Euro 2025 and the 2025 Club World Cup.

The technology was seen being utilised at this summer’s World Cup, including to disallow a late Croatia equaliser in their last-32 loss to Portugal by detecting that the ball had flicked off striker Igor Matanovic in the build up, before landing to midfielder Mario Pasalic in an offside position.

Puma has supplied Premier League match balls since the start of the 2025-26 season, taking over from Nike, and is also La Liga’s official ball supplier.