![\"Sam](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/YZF3FwD2Un.jpg\")
<\/p>\n <\/p>\n
Having broken back into England’s T20I plans just in time for another World Cup, Sam Curran is poised once again to be England’s starring man, writes Ben Gardner.<\/p>\n
Sam Curran is not, by the pure metric of average, a good T20 No.6, averaging 16 at the position in all short-form cricket. Only Carlos Brathwaite has batted there as often with a worse average. And by the pure metric of strike rate, his innings in the third T20I against Sri Lanka was not a good innings by a No.6, coming at a strike rate of 121. But then, coming in inside the powerplay is not what T20 No.6s are supposed to do. Curran realised the situation called for something different.<\/p>\n
And so he scampered and stood firm, bade his time rather than swinging freely. He hit just one six in 48 balls<\/a>. He got England up to a total they were just able to defend. This was a set of circumstances and conditions a No.6 will face very rarely in T20 cricket. And yet it also showed exactly why Curran is the right man to be England\u2019s No.6 at the T20 World Cup.<\/p>\n As recently as five months ago, England and Brendon McCullum didn\u2019t know what to do with Sam Curran<\/a>. He wasn\u2019t originally picked in their T20I squad to face South Africa, their last home series before the T20 World Cup, despite a starring role in Oval Invincibles\u2019 third consecutive Hundred triumph. McCullum had taken a look at him at the start of his white-ball tenure, and then didn\u2019t pick him from the start of 2025 until that late call-up in September.<\/p>\n Despite his growing status as a titan of English domestic T20 cricket, and his undeniable potential as a multi-faceted cricketer, there was a cold logic to Curran\u2019s exclusion. His bowling<\/a>, even now is not seen as justifying inclusion as a front-liner, meaning if he is to play, it has to be as one of the top six. But he has shown he is not suited to being a traditional T20 finisher, and while he is a capable batter in the top five, he is not quite on the level of England\u2019s best. Therefore, he has sat on the sidelines.<\/p>\n Curran, however, has often confounded cold logic and defied easy categorisation. To start with, let\u2019s look at the fact that he has never nailed being a T20 finisher<\/a>. The main requirement for this job is being a good six-hitter, and Curran is, on the face of it, a good six-hitter. He has an easy, free-flowing bat swing, and in Test cricket, his sixes per innings ratio sandwiches him between Flintoff and KP in England\u2019s all-time top ten.<\/p>\n What holds him back here is that the traditional remit of the role \u2013 come in, slog, job done \u2013 fails to make use of his main virtues. Curran has always been a cricketer whose essential quality is unquantifiable<\/a>. It\u2019s not found in a match-up or a set of numbers, but in his appetite for the fight, his sense of what a moment requires, and his ability to rise to it. This has been the case ever since he first stepped into Surrey\u2019s academy as a teenager, when he arrived with plenty of fanfare, and to begin with struggled to justify the hype. \u201cWhen Sam first came over, he had this huge reputation, but for about two or three weeks on the hard indoor surface, he didn\u2019t look anything special,\u201d Neil Stewart, Surrey\u2019s academy coach, recalled in 2018. \u201cHe looked like a lad who was a little bit loose and would get out, and bowl medium-pace swingers. He just looked like a good 14-year-old cricketer.\u201d<\/p>\n ALSO READ: ‘I’ve been non-stop since leaving school’ \u2013 Sam Curran, and the importance of standing still<\/a><\/p>\n Then Stewart put Curran into a match situation. \u201cSuddenly you saw a completely different bloke. As soon as he was in a team against another team he ran in, bowled quick, and for those three weeks when it was competitive he never got out. You just knew he was a very high-quality player.\u201d<\/p>\n It\u2019s this strength that shines through at the end of T20 World Cups, and that can at times be dimmed on the franchise circuit. If you\u2019re a cricketer who thrives in the games that matter most, what does that mean when most of the games you play don\u2019t matter? It\u2019s a similar strand of thinking that made Ben Stokes<\/a> so crucial in the 2022 T20 World Cup. He was, by that point, not a T20 cricketer at the forefront of the world game. But he had also shown he could be counted on when the heat was rising. Semi-finals and finals of T20 World Cups are not like most T20 cricket matches. The bowling attacks are better. The pressure is higher. Sometimes it is about not getting out, about knuckling down, about throwing a blanket over a chip pan fire, rather than whacking a slow left-armer into the terraces. There\u2019s no Stokes this time around, but in Curran, England have the man who most mirrors his main character energy.<\/p>\n Since his debut, Curran has often been at the fringes, and yet has also been at the heart of two of England\u2019s biggest triumphs. He was Player of the Series in a 4-1 win against India in 2018, his first summer in a Test shirt, despite not scoring a hundred or taking a five-for. Instead, it was a series of contributions at the series\u2019 hinge points that led Virat Kohli to credit Curran as the difference between the sides. That remains England\u2019s last triumph in a five-Test rubber.<\/p>\n Four years later, he was at the heart of another last-of-its-kind win, Player of the Tournament as England won the T20 World Cup<\/a> to become the first dual world champions in men\u2019s cricket. Again, it was that sense of a moment that defined Curran\u2019s campaign, always there with the answer to take a momentum-halting wicket at the death. At the time, the win seemed to confirm the continuation of England\u2019s white-ball dominance. In hindsight, it stands as the last gasp of a soon-deflated side.<\/p>\n And now here we are, four years on again, Curran having fought his way back in, ready once again to be England\u2019s star man when it matters.<\/p>\n Follow Wisden for all cricket updates, including live scores<\/a>, match stats, quizzes<\/a> and more. Stay up to date with the latest cricket news<\/a>, player updates, team standings,<\/a> match highlights, video analysis<\/a> and live match odds<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Having broken back into England’s T20I plans just in time for another World Cup, Sam Curran is poised…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":412761,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[1721,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-412760","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cricket","tag-cricket","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/412760","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=412760"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/412760\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/412761"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=412760"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=412760"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=412760"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}