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Whatever the casual fan in England thinks of these white-ball series, few players embarking on this three-week trip to the West Indies needed to make an impression with the selectors more than Sam Curran as he approaches his eighth year in international cricket.
Bizarrely still only 26, he divides opinion on his best-suited role in the limited-overs formats and his inclusion continues to trigger plenty of discussion.
It is barely two years since the Surrey all-rounder’s Player of the Tournament display in 2022 in Australia, where he took 13 wickets in six outings at 11.38 runs per wicket and a scalp every 11 balls or so. But Curran’s form with the ball has gone noticeably south since that edition, and that has played out in his being released by his franchises for next year’s SA20 and IPL.
The last World Cup in June saw England wilt under the tag of defending champions and his three wickets in five matches was symptomatic of the side’s decline (as was 12 runs across the two occasions he batted). Curran’s peak during the 2022 T20 World Cup was such a huge part of what made England world-beaters, that without that banker, alongside their struggles with form and availability, they’ve slid down the ranks.
Struggling to find a role in the intervening two years, Curran’s place in the side has been hard to pin down. He’s occupied a reduced role with the ball in the side as an allrounder in the lower-order. However, his success as primarily a middle-order batter in the Caribbean indicates how England could have stumbled on his best usage going forward. His crucial 41 at No.5 in the third T20I set up a narrow victory for the tourists in St Lucia, following success at No.6 in the ODI series. Even though the sample size on the international stage is small, if Curran’s recent form in the Blast and The Hundred is anything to go by, it could be a promotion that reaps rewards.
In July, mere weeks after that ill-fated World Cup campaign, batting at No.5, he crashed his way to a maiden T20 ton for Surrey against Hampshire in the Blast, launching an enormous six over mid-off to win the game for his county and simultaneously reach three figures at the Oval.
Was the pinning of hopes on his left-arm medium-fast action and lower-order accelerator pedal a mis-step? Curran is a victim of his own success, perhaps. His surprise burst on to the international scene as a 19-year-old in the summer of 2018, when he took 13 Test wickets at 23.23 against India and Pakistan and played some useful cameos with the bat, paved the way for a career as a bowler who could score runs. Equally, that was what England needed across all formats at the time, their top and middle-order awash with the 2019 contingent. Back then, and even now, Curran’s potential in the middle-order has never been enough to demand a spot when everyone is available.
Looking back at Curran’s journey as an England white-ball cricketer, his role has rarely reflected how he’s viewed domestically. In 2018, Curran batted at No.6 or seven for Surrey, but before his white-ball call-up in 2019, he had found success at the top of the order in the T20 Blast, batting above the likes of Ollie Pope and Jamie Smith. He was also rarely used as a front-line bowler in that era, although his role in that regard has fluctuated both with Surrey and Oval Invincibles.
Where he bats, however, has been a near-constant as a top five option. In last year’s Hundred, Curran finished in the top team run-scorers in the men’s competition, scoring 201 runs from six innings at an average of over 40. Of batters who scored more runs than him, only Ben Duckett did so at a higher strike rate. His Blast stats last year were even better – 237 runs from five innings at an average of 59.25. In the Hundred, those numbers were scored batting exclusively between Nos.3 and five, while he batted exclusively at five in the Blast.
That’s in stark contrast to his England career, in which he has rarely batted above six, and primarily operated at seven in T20Is. The result is a T20I batting average of 14.24. His one half-century in the format came in the Caribbean last year when he was moved up to No.4 for one game. England have found a way to squeeze use out of Curran in that lower-order allrounder role, and without him in that position, there would have been no POTT performance in the 2022 T20 World Cup. But, from a long term career point of view, that’s not how England are going to get the best use out of him going forward.
England have a glut of all-rounders. Talents for the future like Jacob Bethell and Dan Mousley mean that competition for places is rife but despite the fact he’s probably going to struggle to get into England’s best XI in that role at the moment, there’s still opportunity for a 26-year-old with as much experience as him. A re-energised Liam Livingstone has convincingly rescued an England career that briefly threatened to be curtailed over the summer. Curran would do well to copy his teammate’s redemption arc.
He has unearthed run-scoring form at an opportune time ahead of Brendon McCullum taking charge of the white-ball squads in India this coming January and the Champions Trophy the month after, and done enough to at least stay in the conversation. Curran has taken the English cricketing public by surprise with some stirring performances before – why not once again?
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