Six white-ball stars England should call up for Harry Brook’s new-look team: The history maker, Brook’s old mate and the man IPL sides have their eye on
The appointment of Harry Brook as captain opens a new era for England’s limited-overs teams following a spell of sustained misery including ignominious exits at the World Cup and Champions Trophy in one-day cricket and an underwhelming stumble into the semi-finals of the Twenty20 World Cup.
In terms of results, Brook inherits a team that has lost 19 of 26 one-day internationals and 17 in 32 Twenty20 matches, necessitating the need for some freshening up of their personnel.
Here, Mail Sport identifies six players from the county circuit they should be considering ahead of next month’s home series versus West Indies.
Sam Hain (Warwickshire)
What more can Hain do to persuade the selectors he is the mid-innings technician England have lacked over the past 18 months? Not a lot, it seems.
Given his chance to show them against Ireland in September 2023, he put forward his case for future call-ups with a debut 89 at Trent Bridge, yet was dispensed with after just one further appearance in a rain-hit series and has not featured in squads since.
Hain, 29, has put together an outstanding body of white-ball work, one that makes him number one in the country when applying traditional evaluations of the game’s statistics.
The appointment of Harry Brook as England limited overs captain opens a new era for the
Batsman Brook inherits a team that has lost 19 of 26 one-day internationals and 17 in 32 Twenty20 matches
Mail Sport gives six players he should look at bringing into the fold – including Sam Hain
In the history of List A cricket, his average of 57.76 is only marginally second to Australian Michael Bevan’s 57.86 and he makes a half-century in 44 per cent of his appearances.
In fact, so outstanding are his 50-over numbers that his Twenty20 prowess gets overlooked, yet no English-qualified batsman in 22 years of the shortest format can match his mark of 38.77. Graeme Hick, next best on the list with 36.39, only played 37 matches to Hain’s 160.
However, despite being able to evaluate risk through various phases of an innings and keep the scoreboard moving for its duration, an international career has so far proved elusive.
With England supporters increasingly annoyed that some players appear bombproof, though, there will be pressure to give Hain – a regular for England Lions since 2018 – an upgrade.
Tom Banton (Somerset)
This one is a bit of a cheat code tip as Banton was summoned to India in February following a glut of injuries, making a sound impression with 38 in his first international appearance since 2022 during defeat in Ahmedabad, and then retained as Jacob Bethell’s replacement for the Champions Trophy.
Such has been his domestic form, however, that there is now a case for the fresh energy provided by the Somerset wicketkeeper-batsman developing into something of greater permanence.
For years, it appeared that the Sutton Coldfield-raised player’s talent would remain unfulfilled. While his friend Brook’s career went one way, Banton’s went another. At times during his three-year exile, he could not make Somerset XIs and he openly admitted to hating the sport for a period.
His relationship with Brook, stretching back to their England Under-19 days, could be crucial in earning a place in the rebuild, and he is also in the kind of imperious form that so often precedes a successful transition to the global stage.
Banton’s 371 last week – a record score for a Somerset batsman – might have come against a red ball sent down by a green Worcestershire attack, but it was hardly a contribution in isolation.
Last September, he finished with Division One scores of 73, 46, 132 and 46 (batting on one leg against champions Surrey) and then made the franchise world take note of his run glut with two hundreds at the ILT20 – form that encouraged Rob Key and Brendon McCullum that he was worthy of a second coming with England.
Tom Banton has put his name back into the hat with a seriously impressing run of scores, including his 371 this week
For years, it appeared that his was a talent that would be unfulfilled, but he could soon be set for a return to the fold
Max Holden (Middlesex)
A former England Under-19 captain, Holden made his county debut as a teenager but has only truly blossomed since hitting the mid-point of his 20s two years ago.
It was not so much the number of runs he scored during his Vitality Blast break-out season of 2023 (420) as the rate at which he scored them.
The left-hander’s strike rate of 185 was comfortably the highest of any frontline batsman and highlighted a distinct change in approach for a player who had previously been viewed as something of a first-class specialist.
Holden’s clean ball striking has also become a feature of overseas tournaments, with 230 runs coming in four innings at the ILT20 earlier this year.
And if further evidence was required that he is a player coming into his own, it has been shown with his performances across all formats. In 2024, he struck 981 first-class runs, easily his best return for a county summer, and he began this season with a battling second-innings hundred to alter the momentum of a match against Lancashire at Lord’s.
His left-handedness should also be considered. While opponents had a balance of left and right throughout their teams, England’s Champions Trophy squad featured just Ben Duckett – one of several tactical shortcomings in the tournament.
It is not so much the number of runs that Max Holden scores, but how quickly he scores them
James Coles (Sussex)
Despite it feeling like Sussex’s youngest first-class debutant has been around forever, Coles only turned 21 on the eve of this season.
The landmark coincides with an increasing maturity to his game and if England are not going to entertain the idea of recalling the street-fighter of spinning all-rounders in Liam Dawson, then they ought to cast a glance down the south coast and consider a younger model.
Coles, whose slow left-arm bowling is more suited to white-ball than first-class cricket at this stage of his career, is also a versatile batsman, already holding down the No 4 position in a Sharks team that were Twenty20 finals day participants last September, and a fine fielder.
Successive winters spent away with England Lions have resulted in a strong relationship developing with spin guru Graeme Swann.
Swann has become a significant influence on his approach to bowling, encouraging a switch in modus operandi from containment to wicket-taking and in field settings from defensive to attacking.
In between, for Sussex, Coles took 20 T20 wickets at 20 runs apiece and struck 354 runs, meaning he only trailed Australian overseas player Daniel Hughes amongst his county team-mates during the 2024 Blast campaign.
James Coles has only just turned 21 and is both a handy bowler and versatile batsman
Jordan Thompson (Yorkshire)
Brook knows plenty about the 28-year-old, who backs up his bustling seam bowling with some left-hand long handle.
Thompson’s career has been one of vintage vignettes rather than a catalogue of consistency, but it is his ability to turn things on at the back end of either innings that make him an attractive proposition.
He lives by the saying: Pressure’s a privilege. ‘If you’re in those situations, it means that you’ve probably done well to get there,’ he says. ‘You’ve got to put yourself in those positions to see how you react. Sometimes you’ll come out on top and sometimes you won’t.’
As a type 1 diabetic, Thompson has had to fight harder than most to thrive in the professional game, ensuring his blood sugar levels are at the correct level to get him through hours on the field of play.
Memorably, he has also come out on top in duels during some of the domestic game’s biggest matches.
Back in 2022, he somehow defended five off the last over in a Yorkshire heist at the Oval that left Surrey stunned. Then, at finals day, under the captaincy of Brook, he lived up to the Big Show nickname that emanated from that performance with a spree of five sixes in seven deliveries during a 18-ball 50 off Lancashire on finals day at Edgbaston.
He comes into this season having taken 20 wickets in each of the previous two Blast campaigns, also sat atop the bowling charts during the inaugural season of the Hundred and has been on the radars of Indian Premier League franchises during recent winters.
Brook knows Jordan Thompson, who has a canny ability to change things at the end of an innings, well
David Payne (left) could also find himself back in the fold due to the variety in his bowling
David Payne (Gloucestershire)
One of England’s most obvious failings last winter was a lack of variety in their bowling bowling attack. A devotion to pace over craft meant bowlers able to go up and down the gears instead of being stuck on full throttle were conspicuous by their absence.
Australia’s Nathan Ellis highlighted the value of changing things up, proving to be the hardest bowler to hit in the Champions Trophy clash between the Ashes adversaries in Lahore because batters could not set themselves for what was coming next.
Payne operates in a similar way, looking initially to swing the new ball, then nip the older one around off the seam before participating in the mind games associated with the death of an innings.
He also offers a point of difference via his left-arm angle. When he made his lone international appearance to date against the Netherlands in 2022, it was as one of three seam bowling southpaws, yet England have recently slipped into the habit of picking a bank of one-speed-fits-all right-armers.
As an England Under-19 contemporary of Ben Stokes, Joe Root and Jos Buttler, his age might work against him, but at 34 he is still influencing tournaments: last year he finished as the leading wicket-taker in the Vitality Blast as Gloucestershire became champions for the first time, and he also took the new ball for Big Bash League winners Perth Scorchers in 2023.
The counter argument is that he is not quick enough for international level, but that has not stopped his effectiveness against top opposition, stemming back to his brilliant shut-out of Surrey at Lord’s in the one-day cup final 10 years ago.
