Last Updated on 9 months ago by Charbel Coorey
Are England getting the best out of Sam Curran? | Looking at how England can maximise the potential of Sam Curran in Test cricket
The first Test match of the second World Test Championship ended in a draw thanks to the cruel English weather. Now, England and India will have a face off in the 2nd Test at the “Home Of Cricket”, Lord’s.
There are several points to talk about in this series; a major one among them is the way England see Sam Curran in their Test set up. Sam Curran is inarguably one of the finest young talents in world cricket right now. He is a very passionate cricketer and does have great potential to become the poster boy of English cricket.
But, England don’t maximise his potential and they can use him in a more appropriate manner. In this article, I am going to reveal why I feel this way and how they can use him in the best possible way. Here we go.
Current role of Sam Curran in the Test side
In his 3-year old Test career, Sam has batted at numbers 8 or 9 in 88.57% of his total innings. Further, England decided to go with 7 pure batting options and 4 bowling options including Sam in the first Test at Nottingham. These facts clearly indicate that they see him as a bowling all rounder, i.e. a bowler who can contribute some runs with the bat.
But does he bowl as many overs as the other pure bowlers do? The answer is no. I have plotted a graph below which shows the number of occasions he has bowled certain percentages of the total overs.
It is pretty clear from the graph that Sam has bowled less than 10 percent of the total number of overs on most of the occasions in his brief career so far. This signifies that although England see him primarily as a bowler who can bat, they have not used him with the ball in the most convincing manner.
So, there exists some lack of clarity practically regarding his role as a bowling all rounder in the English Test side.
Is Sam Curran really a bowling all rounder?
Sam Curran, the bowler, operates at a pace mostly ranging between 125-135 kph. Added to that, his short stature doesn’t allow him to cause trouble for the batters via extra bounce off the surface.
So, his strengths with the ball are limited to swing and seam. Whenever he bowls, he mostly tries to pitch the ball up and get some movement in the air as well as off the surface. Due to these limitations, he doesn’t seem to be a bowler suited for all conditions in the longest format of the game. He can mostly be threatening in favourable conditions for fast bowlers. These kinds of “condition-oriented” bowlers can only be supportive and give some good overs when the ball does something.
But when Sam Curran bats, we don’t see a typical tail-ender slogging in the middle. His head stays still and he plays with a straight bat face, much like a proper batsman. He has mostly been given the job to score quick runs batting at 8, yet averages 32.72 in 21 innings including 3 fifties in that particular position (just 3 not outs). This definitely indicates his immense potential with the bat and therefore I feel he is better as a batsman than a bowler. So, he should play the role of a batting all rounder in the side in my opinion.
He has the capability to bat a bit up the order and also he can provide a really decent fifth bowling option to his team. Particularly in the current scenario where England don’t have their premier batting all-rounder Ben Stokes, they should at least give Sam Curran a try as his alternative. Obviously, I don’t mean he can turn out to be as impactful as Stokes all of a sudden, but it’s the only way England can get the most out of him.
This is my take on the way England should see him as a prospect in Tests from now onwards.
Have your say!
Written by Debashish Sarangi. Follow Debashish on Twitter today.
