“I feel like Tom’s time for making hanging baskets is over,” says Bill Hartley with a proud smile.
In November, Bill’s son Tom came to fill in for the family flower and plant business for a week; Tom normally works in production. On Sunday, Tom produced something even better: 7-62 on Test debut to power England to victory in Hyderabad.
Tom is the sixth generation of the family to work for Hartley’s Nurseries, the horticultural business in the Merseyside village of Lydiate. It was founded in 1890.
Growing up, Tom was hired to “produce bedding plants, hanging baskets and plants for sale at the nursery,” Bill recalls. “He helped with watering whatever needed to be done.”
If the family business was one of the foundations of Tom’s youth, the other was sports. In 1974, Bill won a gold medal at the European Championships in Rome in the 400 meter relay; he also won a silver medal at the Commonwealth Games the same year. His wife Ann-Louise, Tom’s mother, rode horses competitively. Annabelle, Tom’s older sister, swam competitively in school and college.
“I wanted to try to create a platform for him where he could just move on in the best way he could,” Bill reflects. “He played a lot of different sports, played rugby, played football.”
Working with plants, “Tom saw the problem solving you need every day: attention to detail, good habits,” Bill recalls. “If you want to produce a good package of bedding plants, everything has to be in the right order at the right time. And it’s really no different than preparing for any sport.
‘Our work is about solving problems, right? Well, that’s what his work is about. Because you get problems every day if you don’t work, something doesn’t work or it doesn’t go well or whatever. You have to find a way.”
But for all his sporting genes and encouragement to be active – although Bill never pressured his son to follow him into athletics – Tom’s start in cricket was slow.
Everton’s Phil Jagielka and Leighton Baines were Tom’s early sporting heroes. It wasn’t until the age of 10 that Tom started playing cricket after being encouraged to play at Merchant Taylors’ School in Crosby.
‘He came home from a day at school and said they had given us a bat, a ball and some tree stumps. “Can I get a bat daddy?” That was it.”
Tom was not a child prodigy. “He was a late developer. He was one of those kids who was quite weak when he was maybe 13, 14.”
“He learned his work ethic from the company.”
For Bill, it was not just his skills but also Tom’s temperament that stood out. Despite all his own sporting achievements, Bill is jealous of his son’s balance.
‘I wish I could be more like him. He doesn’t get upset. He has a good attitude for pressure situations.
“He’s a good kid and he’s just worked incredibly hard. And he is always looking for improvement. The work ethic is probably the biggest thing he’s learned from the company and from watching what happens here.
“Especially with spinners, you don’t always have great days and things don’t go the way you want. But he would come back and analyze what he had done and watch film. That kind of approach helped him enormously.”
A new Barmy Army song? ‘I want to dance with Tom Hartley’
Tom’s cricket progressed as he underwent a rapid growth spurt, from 15 to 19, and became stronger. When cricket took over football, Hartley threw himself into his local club, Ormskirk, which is three miles from the family home.
“I couldn’t praise them highly enough,” says Bill. “They gave him responsibility from an early age. By the time he was 13, 14, he was playing second-team cricket – basically men’s cricket. And they gave him opportunities in a way that was a bit like Ben Stokes did.”
At the age of 18, Tom was offered a university place to study marketing, with the expectation that he would join the family business. Before starting his studies, Tom took a gap year in Australia, playing club cricket in Melbourne. When he came back, Tom said, “Dad, I’d like to give cricket a try.”
In 2019, just before turning 20, Tom signed a summer contract with Lancashire. The following year he broke into the club’s first-class and T20 sides, but continued to play for Ormskirk as much as possible; in 2022 he managed five games in the Liverpool Premier League.
Tom has good friends at the club and continues to visit when he can. In the hours after his seven-wicket haul to England, Ormskirk offered all members a free drink to celebrate. The sight of his teammates singing “I wanna dance with Tom Hartley” to Whitney Houston’s “I wanna dance with Nobody” was a testament to the appreciation he enjoys here.
‘After two balls I knew he would have a better day… but I had no idea how good’
Bill didn’t keep the club parties; he was exhausted by 4am emergency calls during the four days of the Hyderabad Test, made possible by herbal tea.
‘I was hopeless at work and did nothing. The four days have been just a blur. I really walked around in a daze. You bowl every ball to him, but you can’t do anything.’
For Bill it is a completely different area of tension than participating in top sport himself.
“I used to be terribly nervous. And when the gun goes, you forget it all. Then when you race, especially in the 400 meters, you have given everything. When you recover from your race, you have the satisfaction of giving it your all. But when you look at someone else, it’s not like that, there’s no liberation.”
When Hartley bowled on his first day as a Test cricketer, there also initially seemed to be no release. His first ball was hit for six; he conceded 63 in nine overs.
‘You just feel for him, but you can’t do anything. And the only person who can turn the tide is him. You just have to believe that he has the resources to get to the other side.”
Bill messaged his son after the cathartic start. Despite the torrid day, Bill believed Tom would be buoyed by what had underpinned his entire cricketing journey: his temperament.
“It is very solid, on a very even keel; never gets too high, never gets too low. He is thoughtful, thinks about things a lot. I think that’s why he was finally able to recover from what happened to him on the first day. He had analyzed what he was doing and figured out a way to use the pitch better by varying a few things in the second innings.” Bill noticed how Tom slowed his pace during the chase in India.
“When I looked at the first two balls and saw that he had made changes to his run-up and the way the ball came out, I was confident he would have a much better day. But I had no idea he would have a day like he did.”
Now it’s not just Tom who has to get used to his new status; his father too. “There is no way to prepare your son for what happened – there is no way to prepare the parents either.”