Aspiring Lion Joe Clarke puts fast-track ambitions to one side

Carrying the weight of expectation can be tough for a young player in any sport, particularly when the burden comes from what you expect of yourself.

When Joe Clarke, a precociously talented 19-year-old with a first-class hundred already to his name, was selected for an England Lions tour at the end of his first season as a professional cricketer he thought he was on a fast track into the Test side.

He had seen Joe Root make his Lions debut at 20 and become a Test player the following year and imagined his career would be similarly meteoric.

Three years on, Clarke is about to jet off on his seventh overseas Lions trip for the series against Pakistan A in the UAE and that promotion to the senior England side still has not happened. Only now is he realising that allowing himself to think it was inevitable is probably part of the reason.

"In that first season, it just happened so quickly." he said. "I went from the start of the summer in the second team to playing first team, scoring hundreds, playing for the Lions.

"You start thinking you are next one who goes in, who gets thrown in straight away and almost gets fast-tracked and I think I got caught up in that a lot.

"I thought it was just going to be the natural step for me to go up again. It probably mentally took over with my batting. I almost expected it was going to happen quickly and then it didn't.

"I would come on these Lions trips and either not play or have just one or two games and it not go so well. Yet I would always go back to Worcester and perform."

His career stats underline the point. At the age of 22 he already has 12 first-class hundreds, a record matched by no other English player in the modern era except Alastair Cook, and one that has earned him a move from Worcestershire to Nottinghamshire, where he will play from 2019.

Yet it took Clarke until his 23rd appearance to register his first fifty for the Lions. He has made another five appearances since but even with all that experience only now does he feel ready to do himself justice.

"I do think now after three or four seasons of first-team cricket I am a lot better suited to come on these trips," he said. "I know a lot more about my game. And although you are seen as part of a group of people who are next in line, I feel I can now treat these [Lions] matches like any other game, like I have for Worcestershire.

"Rather than going out thinking if I get runs I could be the next one into the England team, I feel ready to relax and play my natural game."

It comes, moreover, after a summer in which his ability to keep a level head has been put to the test again. Worcestershire were relegated, but Clarke, who had previously scored most of his first-class runs against Division Two opponents, banished any misconceptions that might have been drawn from that by making hundreds against Surrey, Essex and Nottinghamshire - three of Division One's best bowling attacks. Inevitably, the England talk hotted up.

"It was the first time it has happened and when your name starts getting in the mix you can't not see it," he said. "I didn't particularly want to see it or try to see it but you just naturally do. You have got people at your club, friends or whoever it might be might, who send you a Tweet and it is a weird thing to deal with for the first time.

"Somebody will come up to you and say 'have you seen this?' and you're thinking 'I'd rather you hadn't shown me that'.

"But when it does happen it is all about not thinking about it and going out the next day and bat as though I hadn't seen it. That has to be my mentality going into this series. If I can go out and score runs it will come through the same process that it has this season and the season before."

Clarke clearly hopes his move to Nottinghamshire will further enhance his chances of making that next step.

"It was a difficult decision to make to leave Worcestershire," he said. "I was an academy guy there and it was a tight group. They have some good, exciting young players and we had just won T20 finals day and you could see the future was bright.

"But Notts have a proven history of producing lads who have gone on to play for England. They play on good surfaces and Peter Moores is someone who commands great respect as probably the best coach in England, especially in county cricket.

"I was especially looking forward to working with him and having done a couple of sessions with him I can already see why he is held in such high regard.

"I'm not necessarily looking too far ahead at that end goal now but at the end of day I want to move to the next level and I thought Notts was the right move to hopefully take me there."