At 5am on Thursday Keaton Jennings jumped out of bed in a state of blind panic, convinced he had slept through his alarm and missed the team bus.
Nine hours later, with a couple more heart-in-mouth moments along the way, the 24-year-old was raising his bat at the Wankhede Stadium in celebration after becoming the 19th England batsman to taste the sweet success of scoring a Test century on debut.
It is not possible to be certain, given a list that stretches back to the pre-YouTube days of WG Grace scoring 152 against Australia at The Oval in 1880, but it is fair to assume that Jennings was the first to bring up the milestone with a reverse-swept four off the spinner.
This was a moment of nerveless audacity from the left-hander on 96, who only three days earlier had begun life as part of the senior England squad after flying in from the Lions camp in Dubai as a replacement for the injured Haseeb Hameed.
“I looked at the scoreboard and thought: ‘Would I rather get caught at slip defending or would I rather get caught going for my hundred?’ So I bit the bullet, went for it, and thankfully I connected and it went for four,” Jennings said after stumps.
“I had seen 96 on the board but when I hit it the ground went a bit dull. I thought I had mucked up and got it wrong. But then I realised. In that moment you don’t want to go ballistic but the emotion, elation and pride and satisfaction that came over me was really special. It’s been a dream come true and it’s just surreal that it’s come on debut.”
If control (and occasional brutality) was the hallmark of his 112 then things began in shaky fashion when, on nought, Jennings edged Umesh Yadav to gully in the third over of the day only to find Karun Nair in generous mood. “When the ball looped up to gully, my heart was in my mouth and I just kind of thought: ‘Oh no, you’ve got nought in your first innings.’ I had a little bit of luck, but I suppose that’s the way the game goes sometimes,” said Jennings, who also survived a tight lbw shout on 10 from Bhuvneshwar Kumar.
Like his jumpy body clock in the morning, the near misses served as a wake-up call, after which he displayed all the talents that saw him barge his way into the thoughts of the selectors with his 1,548 runs for Durham as Division One’s top-scorer in 2016 and now sees them pondering who of out himself, Hameed and Alastair Cook will bat at No3 next summer. “Thankfully, it’s not my problem. I hope I can keep going the way I’ve gone today and, I suppose, make it a good problem for them.”
Of course it did not take long for the wags on social media to pipe up with references to his birthplace, Johannesburg, his captaincy of South Africa’s Under-19s or the fact that three of his four predecessors in the club of England centurions on Test debut – Jonathan Trott, Matt Prior and Andrew Strauss – had similarly entered the world more than 8,000 miles south of Buckingham Palace.
Jacques Kallis, scorer of over 13,000 Test runs with a Protea, not the crown and three lions, on his chest, struck a more sombre tone, tweeting: “Yet another one slips through our system. Well played Keaton Jennings.”
These are sensitive times for South African cricket, with three (now former) internationals in recent weeks having signed for English counties before next season – on Kolpak deals – in what is becoming something of an increasing cricketing exodus for reasons both financial and quota-related.
But Jennings did not exploit any loopholes. His mother is English and he is open about the fact that when he renounced his domestic status in South Africa as a player with Gauteng in 2012 and began a four-year qualification period, he made a considered career choice that was open to him.
His father, Ray, a former South Africa wicketkeeper during the country’s years in sporting isolation and who honed his game from a young age, told him the English game represented the best place for him to live out his own dream.
It was also a decision that reflected how at home he had been made to feel when joining the Durham academy the previous year. The accent may always be more biltong than Byker Grove but speak to those involved in the rise of Jennings and they will tell you about a young man who is loyal, hard-working, honest and very much part of the furniture. Little wonder they are desperate for him to stay, given he could enact an exit clause in his contract following their enforced relegation for financial reasons.
Jennings, who was presented his new cap in the morning by the club’s chairman-elect, Ian Botham, was the 10th England cricketer to roll off their production line and his innings, like the measured unbeaten 25 from his county team-mate Ben Stokes that steered the side to stumps, is the latest reminder of the debt the country owes them.
