For a while, Sam Curran became used to hearing reasons from England’s leadership as to why he was not in the team. On Saturday, after his unbeaten 49 in the rain-curtailed opening T20 against New Zealand, the message was very different: obviously he has been welcomed back, but now he is going nowhere.
“He was given very honest reasons for why he wasn’t selected,” the England white-ball captain, Harry Brook, said afterwards. “He went back, practised hard, and he’s done really well. He’s going to be around for a while, I think.”
Curran has played in only three of England’s last 20 ODIs and earlier this year found himself out of the setup altogether, missing the five T20s in India that were played during the buildup to the Champions Trophy and the home series against West Indies in June. England’s head coach, Brendon McCullum, challenged him to “keep banging the door down”, and before the three T20s against South Africa that ended the domestic summer it finally fell off its hinges.
“I met up with all the people that I needed to,” he said in Christchurch of meetings with McCullum and Rob Key, England’s managing director of men’s cricket. “It was quite refreshing. The message was just: ‘Get runs, get wickets, and you’ll make your way back in.’ It was very clear what I needed to do.
“In the past, sometimes you can not know where you’re at,” the 27-year-old added. “I’ve played from 19 years old for England, I’ve played a lot of cricket, and I probably learned a lot about myself being away from the team. I sit here now, and I’m probably thankful for kind of a reset.”
The specific challenge was to bat his way back, that he would be recalled only if he could convince selectors that, irrespective of his bowling, he deserved a place in the top six. “The clarity of needing to get into the top six batters was great,” he said. “It was nice that was my clear message, and I feel it was good for me to almost have a bit of time out, go back to where it all started.
“I went back to Surrey, captained and stuff like that,” Curran added. “Went back to coaches who know me. I’ve experienced such highs in my career, and it was about just slowing down fractionally and getting back to enjoying it. And that’s been a clear message now, that I earned my way back in. When I got on the flight, back on an England tour, that was a good feeling. It felt like quite a long time.”
This year Curran won the Hundred for the third year in a row with Oval Invincibles, captained Surrey in the T20 Blast for the first time (save for a three-game, four-day stint in 2023) and averaged 51.16 in six County Championship innings. On the subject of “slowing down fractionally” he developed his notorious moon ball, a slower-than-slow delivery that loops towards befuddled batters at barely 45mph.
“It was just trying to do something different when I was away from the side,” he said. “It’s about being creative. It’s trying to keep evolving. That was part of my time out the side, I was trying to reflect on where I can get better.”
With Jofra Archer, Ben Duckett and Jamie Smith all absent as they seek to build gently towards the Ashes, some players currently involved in New Zealand might find they have only loose grips on their places. This has been England’s year of second chances, though, with other beneficiaries including Tom Banton and Liam Dawson – recalled after absences that had stretched to around three years – and with Zak Crawley on the verge of a first international white-ball appearance for two years.
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It is not the first shared experience for Crawley, Banton and Curran, who were all born in 1998 and have been coming up against each other since all three played in the Under-15 County Cup in 2013, the year after Curran moved to England from Zimbabwe.
“I’ve been non-stop probably since 17 years old. I feel I’ve learned a lot,” Curran said. “A lot of us have talked about that. In our group, if I talk Tom Banton and all these guys, we’ve played together since, like, 17 or 18, so we’ve been in and out. Hopefully we can now try and push this group forward.”
Curran’s winter started with a streaky but compelling knock before the drizzle fell at Hagley Oval – an innings in which the butterfingered Jacob Duffy and Tim Robinson both demonstrated he is not exactly undroppable. It is due to end with the 2026 T20 World Cup in India and Sri Lanka, where Curran will try to repeat his success at the 2022 edition, which he ended with not only a winner’s medal but the player of the tournament trophy.
“It’s definitely the highlight,” he says of that success in Australia. “There’s a few guys in this team who were there, and I guess there’s a drive to do it again. That’s the pinnacle, winning World Cups for your country. I guess on tough days you look at that as your lift-me-up. It’s all building towards trying to do that again.”