'Playing in Australia doesn't faze me' - Finn

The rise and rise of Steven Finn shows no immediate sign of abating, much like the teenage growth spurts that went into creating the 6'7" colossus who was today named for the first time in an England touring party - the 16-man squad for the Ashes campaign that gets underway next month.

As recently as February, barely seven months ago, Finn was just another England fast-bowling prospect, albeit an exciting one, given his alluring combination of extreme height and sharp pace, allied to a rhythmical, repeatable action that enables him, in his own words, "to go through his processes" ball after ball after ball.

Nevertheless, the speed with which his career has progressed this year has been remarkable. In the course of eight Tests since a hurried but hugely composed debut against Bangladesh in Chittagong back in March, Finn has gleaned 32 wickets at an exceptional average of 23.21, and even at the age of 21, is already inked in as a vital component of the four-man attack that England hope can retain the Ashes Down Under for the first time since 1986-87.

"Twelve months ago, if you'd sat me down after I'd taken my wickets [for Middlesex] in the early 30s, and told me I was going to the Ashes next winter, I'd have said you're having a laugh," he told ESPNcricinfo. "But things happen very quickly in sport, and that's the magic of it. That's why we love the game. I've thoroughly enjoyed my year, but it's still 'pinch myself' time, because I'm playing in a team with guys who I looked up to as heroes in 2005 and onwards, when I saw myself as nowhere near anything. It's a great honour to be able to play for my country."

He's been on the sidelines for the past month or so, during the one-day leg of Pakistan's ill-starred tour, although in the circumstances, he couldn't have picked a better moment to escape the limelight and gather his thoughts ahead of the biggest challenge of his career to date. While controversy raged in the wake of the spot-fixing revelations, Finn switched off his phone and took a week's holiday in Cyprus, having wrapped up the season with a gentle final Championship outing for Middlesex against Worcestershire that finished on September 10.

"I've had a week when I've done nothing," he said. "I had a couple of little niggles that I wanted to make sure settled down, and they have done which is encouraging. So I've just taken this week for R&R, and from now on this is where the hard work starts again. I'm definitely going to keep doing stuff to develop myself physically and mentally, and to maintain the stuff I've gained this season through my bowling."

He links back up with his England team-mates later this week, when they all jet off to a secret location for a mystery bonding tour, similar to the trip to the World War One battlefields that preceded the 2009 Ashes. If it could be argued that the players have probably spent plenty time in each other's pockets already in this long and fraught season, then Finn at least knows that he is now absolutely integral to the squad dynamic, in a way that was not the case when he first broke into the squad in a crazy few days in early March.

The call that transformed Finn's career came more or less out of the blue. One minute he was sat on the sofa of his flat in London, half-heartedly contemplating Middlesex's pre-season boot camp in Exeter, the next he had been told to get packing and hasten to the airport, where he would be boarding the first flight to Bangladesh to reinforce England's fast-bowling ranks, after Stuart Broad and Graham Onions had been laid low with back injuries.

"I got a call from Phil Neale [England's operations manager] while I was at the airport saying 'you're playing in the warm-up game that starts tomorrow, get yourself ready for it'. I said an 11-hour flight isn't necessary getting me ready for playing, but I just wanted to go out and embrace it, leave nothing in the dressing-room and nothing on that plane. I wanted to take everything from that and put it into my performance on the cricket pitch. Having that attitude helped."

"I didn't necessarily know that [a Test debut was there for the taking], because Onions still wasn't declared unfit, and Liam Plunkett and Ajmal Shahzad, two high-quality players, were already over there waiting in the wings, so not in my wildest dreams did I expect to play in the Test match. I was expecting to go over there and carry the drinks, and to play in a warm-up game, and play for my country and that was something I was pumped about. To get my Test debut the following week was an exhilarating feeling."

Although he would have to wait until his home Test debut at Lord's for the wickets to start pouring in, Finn showed sufficient discipline on two lifeless pitches at Chittagong and Dhaka to encourage the England management that they had hit upon a character with the right ingredients for international cricket. "There's going to be tougher tests that lie ahead, no question," he said, "but my processes, whether I'm playing Bangladesh or Australia, will be the same. No matter who is put in front of me, it all comes down to what I want to do with the ball, and no matter who's put in front of me I'll try to do the same thing."

Finn is intelligent enough to avoid using the hackneyed old cliché "right areas" when describing his method, but of all of the members of England's Ashes attack, he is the bowler for whom that would be most applicable. Angus Fraser, a master of line and length, is his coach at Middlesex, while England's bowling coach David Saker is very happy to play a hands-off role where his basic disciplines are concerned. Subtle adaptations are all that Finn seeks to make from one venue to the next, and such a phlegmatic attitude will stand him in good stead going into the Brisbane Test on November 25.

"It doesn't matter whether I'm playing on a playground or the Gabba, it doesn't faze me," he said. "Ii just have to put the ball on a good length and do the things that have got me to where I am today. Tinkering when you get to the top level isn't necessary. It's more necessary to be able to focus on where the ball's going and what you're going to do with the ball, and that's the important thing.

"The outcome factor is far more important than the process when you're playing for your country in a high-pressure situation. We all have techniques that we can fall back on and we're comfortable with, and I think that's important."

Nevertheless, to put the challenge into some sort of context, Finn wasn't even born when England last won the Ashes in Australia, and he wasn't even walking when they were lost again in that 4-0 thrashing at the hands of Allan Border in 1989. "The challenge of playing in Australia is vast," he admitted. "But saying that, we are in a very good position to go out and challenge over there, and we are the holders of the Ashes, and that can't be forgotten."