Sam Hain insisted he is finding fulfilment from enjoying his cricket with Warwickshire again, rather than being consumed about whether he will be given a chance with England.
Hain boasts the best List A average of all-time by an English batter, while his red-ball numbers have shot up since the start of last year with 1,573 runs at 65.5 in the LV= Insurance County Championship.
A call-up for next month’s Test against Ireland might have been a stretch but Warwickshire recognise his continued omission, tweeting: “It appears the #HainTrain heading to England Selection is delayed.”
England’s middle-order is vaunted across all formats and Hain, who has represented the second-string Lions for many years, adopts a pragmatic outlook and says his only priority is on what he can control.
“Of course I’d love to play for England but it’s not my sole focus,” he told the PA news agency. “My sole focus is to enjoy my cricket and win games for Warwickshire. If I can do that, I’m happy.
“There’s plenty of cricketers on the county circuit who have been on the fringes. I’m very much aware of how strong the England men’s Test side is, the men’s white-ball side have just won a T20 World Cup.
“I’ve really made peace – I’ve tried to go the other way of really wanting to play for England and just found I got lost in the process rather than just try to enjoy it and then whatever will be, will be.
“My downfall was reading every article, I was looking at what people were saying and I got caught up in my own hype a little bit, especially at 18, 19, 20. At 27, I’ve come full circle again where I don’t worry about what people are saying.”
One of his mentors in former Warwickshire team-mate Jonathan Trott did not make his England debut until the age of 28, before going on to play in three-Ashes winning series, earning 52 Test and 68 ODI caps.
There are similarities between the pair. Hain in List A cricket, a format he has not consistently played since the Hundred’s inception, often eschewed risk, preferring instead to rotate the strike while his first-class strike-rate of 45.05 might not find favour with Ben Stokes or Brendon McCullum.
“People make me aware of my List A stuff,” he added. “As a player, I’ve improved from then so I’d like to think I’m not the List A player that I used to be. Cricket has changed in that time.
“Just look at the way Test cricket is now being played. If you don’t go with the times then you get left behind.
“It’s all about strike-rates these days but within that you’ve still got to win games for your side, so I guess it’s just trying to find the right balance between the two.
“It’s each to their own and up to the individual how they want to go about it. What does your team need? If you’re 30 for four, what does a team need? It’s a question I ask myself when I’m batting.”
Hain, who has two centuries in five championship matches this season, is set to switch his attention to the Vitality Blast, which starts on Saturday at Edgbaston with a double header as his Birmingham Bears take on Yorkshire after Derbyshire face Lancashire.
Moeen Ali will captain them this year after joining from Worcestershire although he will be unavailable for Saturday’s ‘Blast Off’ event due to his Indian Premier League commitments.
“I think we’re quite blessed to have Mo as captain,” Hain added.
“We’re building a side that’s going to play exciting cricket but also there’s a lot of experience. In those big, high-pressure moments those guys have been there and done it.”
Tape ball programme can help England find unorthodox talent – Richard Gould
The England and Wales Cricket Board hopes to unearth a new seam of talent beyond the game’s traditional league structure with a national tape ball scheme that allows players to thrive without “whites, willow and leather”.
The practice of using a soft ball wrapped in electrical tape to aid swing and variable bounce is a common one in Asia, where it has helped produce express pace bowlers like Haris Rauf, Shaheen Afridi and spinners such as Rashid Khan and Shakib-al-Hasan, but has been slow to enter the mainstream conversation in the United Kingdom.
The Chance to Shine charity has long pioneered tape ball cricket as part of its engagement hubs and now, with the ECB keen to live up to its lofty aspiration of becoming the most inclusive team sport in the country, it is at the heart of a new core cities programme designed to engage ‘diverse communities in urban areas’.
Speaking at a launch event where games were hosted in a warehouse space in Birmingham, ECB chief executive Richard Gould was optimistic about reaching out to those with an interest in cricket but limited access to the pavilions and prepared pitches in the club setup.
“We talk about clubs with picket fences around them. In the past that has been seen as the preserve of the ECB. We’ve missed a complete trick on that,” he said.
“When we talk about the recreational game we’re not just talking about Premier League clubs and village cricket clubs now. We’re talking about all forms of cricket that take place.
“You can play the game anywhere, any time, with anybody, in any environment you want. You don’t have to have whites, willow and leather to do it. You can just pick up a bat and a ball and have some fun.”
As well as fulfilling its remit of reaching out to all comers at a grassroots level, Gould also believes there are benefits to finding cricketers with different styles who have learned the game outside the traditional, private-school heavy pathways.
“Without doubt there are,” he said. “We have to get out and try to find the talent. More to the point, we have to try and find talent in areas that we haven’t normally looked for it.
“I do think county pathways will be looking to make sure they don’t miss out on this talent. It’s just about punching through all of our normal procedures and finding ways to both get people in the game and unearthing that talent which may be unorthodox and great.”
Meg Lanning: Exercise obsession and not enough fuel led to Australia retirement
Former Australia captain Meg Lanning revealed her “obsession” with exercise and not eating enough precipitated her surprise international retirement late last year.
Lanning was at the helm of one of the most dominant eras the sport has ever seen but she missed last year’s Ashes for medical reasons and pulled the plug on her Australia career in November.
She opened up about her hidden health issues on the Howie Games podcast, explaining that running up to 90 kilometres a week coupled with eating two small meals a day led to her dropping from 64kg to 57kg.
View this post on Instagram“I was over-exercising and under-fuelling,” the 32-year-old said. “It wasn’t a physical thing. I’ve always been really physically active and liked that side of it, but it became a bit of an obsession.
“I’d maybe eat a couple of meals a day if I was lucky but they weren’t significant. Initially it didn’t start off as a deliberate thing, it just became a bit of a new normal.
“But it slowly crept into conscious decisions because essentially I felt good.
“I wasn’t getting injured like everybody was telling me I was going to do. It sort of just spiralled and I was in denial, even though everybody kept telling me something wasn’t quite right.
“I was not in a place to be able to go on tour and play cricket and give the commitment levels that were required for that Ashes series, mentally and physically.”
Lanning, who led Australia to five World Cup titles in total and Commonwealth Games glory in 2022, said her struggle was not officially diagnosed as an eating disorder.
“It wasn’t labelled as that but I was exercising a lot and I wasn’t eating enough to fuel that – it was a bit out of whack,” Lanning said.
“It was a bit of control because I felt very out of control with what my future looked like. I felt like I was in control of that and that made me feel better.”
Lanning sought help from medical professionals after also struggling with insomnia and continues to play domestically, while she has been signed for London Spirit for The Hundred this year.
“I dreaded night time because I knew I would go to bed and not be able to sleep,” she said. “That would make me so mad. I would just get more angry with myself. If you can’t sleep, you can’t do anything.
“I feel like I’m in a good spot now. Cricket is still part of what I do. But I wasn’t cut out for the international touring schedule and what came with all of that.”
Yorkshire not in ECB’s new ‘Tier 1’ revamp of women’s professional game
Yorkshire will have to wait until 2027 to take part in the England and Wales Cricket Board’s new ‘Tier 1’ revamp of the women’s professional game, after eight other counties were selected to lead the way.
Durham, Essex, Hampshire, Lancashire, Nottinghamshire, Somerset, Surrey and Warwickshire have been chosen as hosts, with the governing body abolishing the existing regional structure in favour of alignment with the first-class counties.
The blow to Yorkshire, for whom this is a further setback after several turbulent years on and off the field, has been mitigated by a promise to bring them into an expanded competition in the third season.
Glamorgan have been given the same assurances and both will receive additional funding to help build their pathway.
But there will be no ‘Tier 1’ cricket at Lord’s in the foreseeable future, with MCC declining to put itself forward and Middlesex among those overlooked. Sussex have also been left on the outside looking in, despite a long and strong commitment to the women’s game.
They will be hoping to be included as the elite level continues to grow, with the ECB outlining plans to further expand to 12 teams by 2029.
ECB chief executive Richard Gould said: “I’d like to congratulate those counties who have been successful in their bids.
“I’m also delighted that in light of the support we have seen and the strength of the bids we have considered, we can accelerate our plans, including new top tier professional teams at Glamorgan and Yorkshire by 2027 with a further two being introduced by 2029.
“More professional teams means more women able to make a career out of being a cricketer, more role models to inspire future generations, and more of the country having a women’s professional team to follow nearby.
“I recognise today’s announcement will also be disappointing to those who haven’t been successful at this stage. But with the new three-tier structure we are introducing, there is still a huge opportunity for them to compete in the other tiers so together we can all realise the potential of women’s domestic cricket.”
Beth Barrett-Wild, the ECB’s director of the women’s professional game, praised the calibre of offers from around the country.
“At the start of this tender process we challenged the first-class counties to show us their vision for the women’s professional game and to demonstrate their desire and commitment to becoming one of our professional Tier 1 clubs,” she said.
“Over the last couple of months it’s been brilliant to see the time and energy that has gone into the submissions, and I’ve been hugely impressed by the quality and ambition of the bids.
“It’s clear that the game is united in wanting to take the women’s professional game forward. I’m energised about what comes next, for the counties themselves, for the players, for fans and for everyone who wants to see women’s cricket continue its accelerated trajectory.”
The ECB has put £5million per year of new funding into the women’s domestic set-up, rising to £8million when Yorkshire and Glamorgan come aboard.
It estimates a potential increase of 80 per cent in the number of professional female players.
There will be no promotion or relegation between 2025 and 2028, allowing the new three-tier system to bed in.
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