If Jason Roy being squeezed out of England’s World Cup plans underlines the bottleneck of white-ball talent in the country then the same can be said about another player hoping to belatedly enter the stage this week.
No English player in history boasts a higher List A average than Sam Hain’s 57.96 – globally, only India’s Ruturaj Gaikwad sits above him on 60.3 – and over the past five years Warwickshire’s middle-order talisman has been a regular for the Lions, notching four centuries for England’s second string.
But it is only now, aged 28 and glowing in all-format form this summer, that Hain finds himself part of a full England squad, sitting among the 15 to face Ireland in three one-day internationals starting at Headingley on Wednesday. A quasi-Lions side it may be, but this is still a significant staging post for a career when patience has been a virtue.
“It is very cool,” Hain says. “People sometimes ask whether I’m annoyed at not getting the call sooner but it’s hard to be bitter when you look around. The talent is almost unfathomable. We have won two white-ball World Cups and even below that squad there are so many unbelievable players trying to push their way in.”
That List A average after 62 matches is quite something. But the numbers are also indicative of English cricket’s priorities since 2019, with the Hundred meaning Warwickshire’s recent one-day cup semi-final was his first 50-over outing for the club in four years. If anything, it is probably Hain’s rise in Twenty20 – a spell at Brisbane Heat and some spellbinding Blast form this summer – that has prompted this step up.
“Everyone talks about the average but it’s all about strike-rate these days,” says Hain, having averaged 96 in the Blast this season but – crucially – at 160 runs per 100 balls. “I missed out on selection for the first season of the Hundred – the year that got cancelled because of Covid – and I had to do a bit of soul-searching.
“I was quite stubborn after some early success but that really forced my hand. Maybe it was what I needed. My thinking changed. At Warwickshire, we’ve had Carlos Brathwaite and Glenn Maxwell in recent years and they taught me it’s more about impact; leaving the scorecard healthier than when you walked out. That used to be scoring 50-plus. Now it might be 20 off 10 balls, it might be 30 off 30. It is all about flipping pressure.”
Along with that previous stubbornness, Hain admits to an early obsession with catching England’s eye that proved slightly self-defeating for a player long tipped for the top. “I got lost in the destination rather than the journey leading up to it,” he says. Like a lot of things in life, it was only after putting this aside that the call came.
“My only regret is I didn’t seek out more answers when I missed out,” he says. “People who know me well know there is an inner hunger that needs to come out more. I’m not lacking ambition, I just keep it in check.
“My job is to score runs, but, also, it’s a job. It’s taken a lot of work to find peace with it all, I didn’t just wake up one day and feel different.”
The ambition was understandable. Born in Hong Kong to parents from Devon, and raised on Australia’s Gold Coast, Hain signed for Warwickshire in late 2012 aged 16. Though a “spotty, naive kid” who landed at Heathrow in the middle of winter wearing flip-flops and board shorts, he had already been capped by Australia Under-19s.
Contemporaries included Pat Cummins, Marnus Labuschagne, Travis Head and Ashton Agar – all full internationals since – but as a dual-national, Hain was set on a different path. He broke into the Warwickshire first XI in his first summer and felt “blessed” to share a dressing room with Jonathan Trott, Ian Bell, Jeetan Patel and Chris Woakes. Comparisons with Trott followed – a leg-side strength made it too easy – but Hain did not mind.
“It might have annoyed Trotty though,” he says, jokingly. “Moving to Warwickshire was a hell of a punt at such a young age. I could have hated it. I had ambition and goals but I also wanted to be happy in myself. I just loved it and it’s long been my home. Although the darkness in winter took a bit of getting used to …
Those Australian roots are still strong, with a hybrid Brummie-Queensland accent he describes as “a bit weird”. The latter had started to creep back more at the start of this year, he says, having enjoyed something of a homecoming playing for Brisbane Heat in the Big Bash League. The spell culminated in a runners-up medal in front of 55,000 and allowed his parents, Debi and Bryan, to watch him play live for the first time.
A bonus may follow, Bryan having travelled to France to watch the Rugby World Cup but now able to hop across the channel to see a possible England debut for his son. “It would be pretty surreal,” says Hain, knowing it is not just his patience that could soon be rewarded.
