Can't stop, won't stop: How the dam burst for Josh Inglis

Back in the day, long before Josh Inglis had made it big, a perceived inability to score a hundred was starting to become a thing. 

Western Australia high performance manager Kade Harvey knew he had a latent talent in Inglis. But he also knew the dashing young right-hander needed to get over this … let's call it a speed bump.

"And then I went to watch one of his grade games at Joondalup," he tells cricket.com.au, "and sure enough, he makes a hundred."

For Western Australia though, the hundred thing continued. Inglis has spent the majority of his first-class career down the order; up until the 2023-24 season, by far his most regular spot in the WA line-up was at seven (there were also 15 innings at eight). There was a brief, failed experiment at number three at the back-end of 2018-19, but in a team brimming with allrounders, the counter-punching 'keeper for a long time seemed destined to come in after the top six. Which meant if he was going to succeed, it would have to be from there.

By October 2020, his hundred drought had extended to 34 first-class matches. It wasn't unprecedented in Australian cricket in recent times (ironically now, that's the same number of games Travis Head went before his maiden century) but it had certainly become a talking point. 

"It was obvious that he was a really good batter, and he desperately wanted to cross that hundred mark," says WA teammate Ashton Agar. "It was like he just needed to get there, and the floodgates would open. 

"And that's exactly what happened."

In the Adelaide-based COVID-19 Sheffield Shield bubble, WA took on South Australia at Karen Rolton Oval to begin their campaign. 

On a placid pitch, Inglis joined Agar out in the middle at 5-215. Watching on, next man in, was Joel Paris. 

"After a while, I took my pads off," he laughs. "Those two didn't look like getting out."

Inglis slowly found his groove that day. His first 50 came from 104 balls.

"We had a really difficult period against the second new ball," recalls Agar. "It took us a long time to get through that, and he showed great temperament, great patience – real restraint when he had to."

As the partnership built, the complexion of the innings changed. Inglis in particular wrested the momentum for his side. His second fifty came from just 53 balls, and when he finally reached three figures, the proverbial monkey was off the back, WA had moved into a strong position, and he was free to explode. 

His third fifty featured six fours and three sixes, and came from just 24 balls. 

"It was incredible," says Agar. "He showed everyone all the different shots that he has. He was playing lap shots both sides of the ground, moving around the crease. It was just a fun time for him."

Inglis made 153no that day and it was indeed the bursting of the dam. By season's end he had added two more hundreds and his tally of 585 runs at 73.12 with a strike-rate of 85.02 put him squarely on the radar of national selectors.

In 28 first-class matches since that breakthrough, he is averaging 46.16. 

"He got that hundred," says Agar, "and he just hasn't stopped."

* * *

During the Justin Langer reign at WA, Harvey watched Inglis closely. Watched how he reacted to sitting on the bench at times for Perth Scorchers. Watched how he handled different bowlers and scenarios in training. Pretty soon he identified a trait he felt was going to hold him in good stead.

"What you see with Josh is, he's got this ability to adapt to any situation," Harvey says. "We could ask him to bat four in a Shield game, and the next week open for the Scorchers. He's one of the very few players who you could ask to do that and know he'd have no problems. 

"And now we see he's being asked to fill Travis Head's spot in the Test team? No problems.

"That comes from an extreme inner belief. It took a little while to come to the surface, and it's rare."

The development was gradual. Harvey remembers a Shield match in Tasmania back in February 2018. WA were skittled for 67 in the first innings and, second time around, Inglis went out to bat on a pair. Minutes later, he was given out on nought, but unusually, he was recalled when a Tigers player said he was unsure a catch had carried. 

Inglis went on to make an unremarkable 30 from 64 balls in that innings but on the plane flight home to Perth, Harvey noticed something in the footage, which he pointed out to the then 23-year-old. 

"Look at how you're setting up before you're given out," he said, "and then look at how you're setting up after you've been called back."

Inglis was looser. More relaxed. On zero, and on a pair, he had been stiff and robotic. Given what he viewed as effectively a free hit, he had subconsciously freed up, allowing his body to move at the crease. It was an important little breakthrough along the journey.

In the years since, Inglis has developed a style where he sets up markedly differently for pace and spin – standing taller, with his hands higher, for the former, and crouching, hands lower, for the latter. 

"He's always tinkering with certain little technical things," says WA batting coach Beau Casson. "Occasionally he's looking to pick his hands up a little bit … (meaning) his hands are above the ball so he's really able to own the contact when he's playing the cross-bat shots."

Always renowned as an outstanding player of spin, Inglis has in recent times made significant advancements in his game against pace as well. His mastery of the cross-bat shots has been a critical part of that, according to state teammate Joel Paris. 

"His play against quicks has improved dramatically in the last two or three years," Paris says. "He's a really strong short-ball player now."

Adds Casson: "We're creatures of our environment, aren't we – playing at the WACA, training there three days a week, you've got to become proficient at playing off the back foot and that's something he's done. He's very dominant on the back foot."

Soon after he started becoming a regular in Australia's T20 and then ODI teams, Inglis realised that with the changing nature of the game, his opportunities to play first-class cricket were going to be scarce. Which was an issue he set about addressing with an eye to still fulfilling his dream of playing Test cricket. 

"In the last couple of years, format jumping has become easier for him because he's found ways to bring his games closer together," Casson says. "There's not much of a change in the way he goes about striking the white ball to the red ball, and that's something that he's done through the experience of playing more cricket.

"He's played a lot of white-ball cricket recently for Australia, but when he came back to Western Australia last year in two Shield games, he got two hundreds where runs were hard to come by. 

"He showed that the jump (in formats) wasn't so great. I think that's consistency, and repeatability, and mindset. He's always proactive, always looking to score runs and dominate, but he's also now playing more regularly the way he needs to play for the situation. 

"Instead of going, 'I play this way' his ability to (assess), 'Am I the enforcer here, or do I need to hold for a period of time?' is really strong. He's just making those decisions better and better over the last couple of years." 

* * *

WA paceman Matt Kelly remembers his junior days with Claremont-Nedlands, when a garrulous kid with a Yorkshire accent would natter away from behind the stumps whenever they took on Joondalup. 

"Josh and I pretty much grew up playing against each other at club level," Kelly says. "He was this young, chirpy English lad with a lot of confidence, fresh from the UK and ready to make an impact. And he certainly did."

Inglis made his first-class debut with a Cricket Australia XI as a 20-year-old. In the WA state system, his peers couldn't help but take notice of his expansive – and innovative – game.

"When he first started, he was probably the first in our group who could play 360 – sweep, reverse sweep, ramp," says Paris. "Maybe not consistently, but he was able to do it at different times."

"He had a different sort of technique early on," says Agar. "And he played spin like no-one I'd ever seen. I was like: Oh my God, he's got all the shots. He had really fast feet. And then he started getting some opportunities in the Shield team.

"He was also unbelievably adaptable. That's something I've always felt with him – he was the one you could slot in the team anywhere."

What impressed Kelly from the outset was the way Inglis was able to score so freely with such little trouble. 

"His game naturally lends itself to scoring quickly," he says. "He's always been a player where he heads out there and all of a sudden, he's 40 off not many balls, and you don't even realise it. And he doesn't force that. He can just play normally and he seems to accelerate the scoreboard very quickly without even trying.

"He's also very creative with how he scores and where he scores, which makes him really difficult to bowl to."

Inglis's selection in this second Ashes Test certainly appears an aggressive one; an opportunity to keep a Head-type player in the middle order while also elevating Head (his first-class strike-rate of 65.01 is a tick above Head's 63.82).

But Agar believes it is too simplistic to view Inglis as simply a right-handed version of Head.

"They're actually quite different," he says. "They both have a lot of shots, there's no doubt about that, but Trav is probably a little bit more aggressive from the outset. 

"'Ingo' I would say is a little bit more correct as a batsman, he still scores quickly because he actually has a scoring shot to most balls, which is incredible. He can hit down the ground, he cuts beautifully, he hits pull shots in white-ball cricket for six for fun … and his play of spin is arguably Australia's best.

"So I think they go about it a little differently; whereas 'Heady' is very aggressive from the outset, 'Ingo' just by nature of having a lot of shots, scores quite quickly."

In the space of five months last summer Inglis added his name to a select few Australians to have score international hundreds in all three formats. Yet with those innings being played in Edinburgh, Galle and Lahore (in fact, 49 of his 77 matches for Australia have been abroad) the diminutive 30-year-old remains something of a mystery to the casual cricket supporter in this country. 

That could all change at the Gabba, under the spotlight of the Ashes and the floodlights of a primetime, day-night Test match. 

"People might not have seen a lot of what he's able to do, but we see it every day," says Kelly. "So it hasn't come as a surprise to us that he's going to be playing another Test match. I think it's time for him to put his mark on the Test team." 

2025-26 NRMA Insurance Men's Ashes

First Test: Australia won by eight wickets

Second Test: December 4-8, The Gabba, Brisbane (D/N), 3pm AEDT

Third Test: December 17-21: Adelaide Oval, 10:30am AEDT

Fourth Test: December 26-30: MCG, Melbourne, 10:30am AEDT

Fifth Test: January 4-8: SCG, Sydney, 10:30am AEDT

Australia squad (second Test only): Steve Smith (c), Scott Boland, Alex Carey, Brendan Doggett, Cameron Green, Travis Head, Josh Inglis, Usman Khawaja, Marnus Labuschagne, Nathan Lyon, Michael Neser, Mitchell Starc, Jake Weatherald, Beau Webster

England squad: Ben Stokes (c), Harry Brook (vc), Jofra Archer, Gus Atkinson, Shoaib Bashir, Jacob Bethell, Brydon Carse, Zak Crawley, Ben Duckett, Will Jacks, Ollie Pope, Matthew Potts, Joe Root, Jamie Smith (wk), Josh Tongue, Mark Wood