When Jordan Cox was rushed into an operating theatre last month to have his appendix removed, he was told his season could be over. Instead, he has rushed himself back ahead of schedule to play for Oval Invincibles in the Hundred, and could spend September involved in England squads across all three formats.
Cox was out for a Sunday morning walk with his girlfriend in Battersea Park when he noticed a missed call from a number with a +64 dialling code. Brendon McCullum eventually got through to him to tell him he was England's spare batter for their Test series against Sri Lanka; noticing Cox squatting on the green in his WhatsApp picture, he then asked: "So, did you sink that putt?"
The call came as a surprise: Cox had targeted England's T20I and ODI series against Australia at the start of this year. "I definitely didn't think the call was going to be for the Test side," he told ESPNcricinfo. "I thought I was a lot closer to the white-ball side of things - to get a call for, hopefully, all three formats would be pretty awesome."
McCullum told him - only half-jokingly - that he should bring his golf clubs to Manchester ahead of the first Test against Sri Lanka, but Cox is not even fit for a round. At the start of last month, he felt some stomach cramps during a County Championship game at The Oval. He was advised to go for scans as a precaution, which discovered his appendix was about to burst.
"I was in hospital for three hours," Cox recalls. "At midnight, they were like, 'we need to operate - now.' The surgeon told me it was going to be an eight-to-twelve week process. That would have ruled me out of the Hundred, which was quite upsetting." Instead, he was back on the pitch after barely four weeks of rehabilitation.
He has been heavily taped up around his midriff since his comeback, and felt some soreness while batting at Lord's on Sunday. "One of the stitches hadn't dissolved yet, so it's still pulling on my hamstring. It feels like every time I overextend that muscle, there's a little 'ping' but I've been to have an MRI scan and the surgeons have said it's not going to do any further harm."
Cox has also been cleared to start keeping wicket again, nearly a year after an Adam Milne in-ducker broke his finger. It means he is in prime position if England want to take a back-up wicketkeeper on their Test tours to Pakistan and New Zealand this winter: "If something happens to Jamie [Smith] and they need someone, I'm more than happy to do it."
It was this time last year that Cox made the decision to leave Kent, his boyhood club, for Essex. He has filled the No. 4 spot vacated by Dan Lawrence and has been dominant with the bat: in the Championship, he is averaging a fraction below 70 for the season, with three hundreds, and sees his Test call-up as vindication of his decision to move clubs.
"Being at Kent was awesome, but I felt like I kept getting 40s and getting out because I was getting bored, or no one was scoring runs at the other end so I felt like I had to do something… when you go to a new team, you feel like you have to prove to every single individual - coaches, staff - that this is why they paid a price for me to come."
He has particularly enjoyed batting with Dean Elgar, the only Essex batter to outscore him this season. "Our age gap is nearly 20 years apart," he laughs - Cox is 23, Elgar 37 - "but I've batted with him a lot this year and he's someone that I've learned from. He's all about the nitty-gritty grind; I would like to call myself a free-flowing player.
"When I go down there, I'm like, 'should I reverse-sweep this over to spin?' He's like, 'just keep ticking it around: it's not T20, you don't need to strike at 140…' Dean and everyone at Essex is just like, 'if you bat through every day, you're going to be 50 not out or 100 not out'. I keep setting milestones to get back and talk to the coaches at every interval."
It seems to chime with England's "refined" approach under McCullum and Ben Stokes this summer. Cox will only play against Sri Lanka if another batter is unavailable, but his previous experience as an unused squad member - on a T20I tour to Pakistan two years ago - suggests he will still benefit.
"I learned loads. That was an eye-opener for me: I didn't play a game out there but, wow - just to see how people went about their business was amazing. I'm really, really looking forward to getting to see the likes of Joe Root and Ben Stokes, what they do on a day-to-day basis. And if I don't play, I'll be over the moon to head back to Essex to try to win the Championship."