“So what was it, Baz, that first attracted you to the 6ft 7in left-arm fast bowler, Josh Hull?”Brendon McCullum’s answer to the inevitable pre-match query at the Kia Oval doubtless had the effect of making England’s rawest recruit feel like a multi-millionaire ahead of his Test debut against Sri Lanka.

“Josh Hull? Six foot heaps, bowls left-arm, ranges in pace from 80 to 90 miles an hour. Swings it, not too dissimilar to the likes of Jimmy Anderson. He’s 20 years of age ... good farming stock. It’s not a huge gamble, is it?”

And, well, when you put it like that... no, I guess it isn’t.

What it is, however, is perhaps the clearest indication yet of McCullum’s determination not to be bound by English convention, which in itself is saying something. For he’s not exactly been shy about parading his genre-busting methods over the past two-and-a-half years of Bazball, but in backing this latest hunch about Hull, he’s surely made his most left-field pick yet.

“We hope he goes well, he might go there and take ten-for ... we’ve got no idea, but it kind of doesn’t matter,” McCullum explained. “We see him as someone that’s worth investing in, and worth giving opportunities to. And whatever happens, we’ll wrap our arm around him, and make sure that he knows that he’s firmly in our sights for the future.”

The optics are extraordinary, either way. Not least when you consider that the chief beneficiary of Hull’s selection could be another unusually tall 20-year-old in England’s ranks, who also boasted a mere ten first-class wickets when he first came to the attention of the selectors, and whose offspinners into the rough outside the right-hander’s off stump are likely to bite that little bit harder once Hull’s sizeable boots have pounded through the crease a few times.

“The footmarks that he’s going to present as well for Shoaib Bashir will be interesting,” McCullum added. “It’ll give Bash a lot of excitement too. But again, I stress, if this isn’t this week, it doesn’t matter. Ultimately, he’s someone who is going to be able to provide us with another string to our bow, another weapon that is going to make us a more rounded side, that can challenge teams in various conditions.”

And there we have it. A few imposing vital statistics, a sprinkling of positive vibes, and the recipe for Test success is there waiting to be grasped, notwithstanding Hull’s first-class haul for Leicestershire this season - two wickets at 182.50 - which might invoke some deeply offended harrumphing in the shires.

And yet, of the five men to have claimed five-fors on debut since McCullum and Ben Stokes took control of the team, only Gus Atkinson came into the side with anything resembling expectation, and he then breezed through to England’s best newbie figures for more than 130 years. Bashir, meanwhile, had three five-fors in five Tests by the time he’d bowled England to victory at Trent Bridge in July. When this England team sets out to do things differently, it doesn’t go in for half-measures.

“The talent we’ve introduced has exceeded expectations, if I’m being totally honest,” McCullum said. “You hope the guys go well early, but you’re not after that instant gratification when you pick them. If you’re doing that, then I think you’re guessing.

“We look at these guys and we think they’re going to be good. It might take a bit of time, but they’re worth investing in. Zak Crawley was a good example of that a couple of years ago. Some of these other guys have come in have done it quicker than what I thought they would do, and that’s incredibly encouraging, and probably testament to the leadership of Stokesy and the leaders within the setup.”

It probably came with a jolt of recognition, at Lord’s last week, when - in the absence of Mark Wood, and with Atkinson a notch below his slipperiest pace - England found themselves grinding to victory thanks to a hard-working fleet of four right-arm medium-pacers, all operating at speeds between 82 and 87mph, which is precisely the sort of line-up that caused the selectors to vow “never again” after the travails of the last Ashes tour.

Hence the cruel but unsentimental ditching of the luckless Matthew Potts, whose important two-wicket burst in the first innings at Lord’s could not disguise the fact that he was operating, albeit skilfully, at the limits of his potential. And if the selection instead of lanky and raw left-armer seems like an over-compensation, then it also feels like a truer reflection of England’s pre-season promise, around the time of Anderson’s axing, to start recruiting the weapons they will need to win in Australia in barely 12 months’ time.

“We need to identify that county cricket and Test cricket are probably slightly different games,” McCullum said. “If we were picking a county side, it would look a little bit different to what it looks like on the Test side. Hence our understanding of what counties are doing, and the decisions that they make, they might not always line up with us, and that’s cool.

“We don’t do stuff in spite of them, we completely understand they have a different job to do. We’re bringing some of these guys who we see as rough diamonds with incredibly high ceilings, into an environment where we’re able to shape them, and give them the opportunities and hasten the process of them getting to the level that we think they can get at.” –cricinfo