Haseeb Hameed's golden summer has fulfilled his destiny as a cricketer for our times, whatever his future holds, writes Ben Gardner.
The promise, the fall and then the rise. That’s the story of Haseeb Hameed, several times over. “One thing I’ve prided myself on from a young age is that my best years were after my worst years,” he said back in 2020, just as he was beginning to remake himself at Trent Bridge, and just as the world was returning to normal, but still reeling from what had just happened. Now he has had, unequivocally, his best year: a new personal record for runs in a County Championship season, captaining Nottinghamshire to their first title in 15 years. Hameed is one of just six captains to lift the trophy in the club’s history. He has dismantled the Surrey dynasty and in doing so confirmed himself as one of the domestic game’s pivotal modern figures, a cricketer for our times and to provide hope for the future.
Watching Hameed emerge in 2016 made it feel like everything might always be this simple. The Baby Boycott moniker summed him up, youthful, innocent, and yet a throwback. There was elegance in his low-handed technique and economy in his method. This was the opener’s mantra: if you kept out the good balls and scored off the bad ones, you’d go far. As a teenager, he became the first Lancastrian to hit twin hundreds in the Roses match. Then he notched 82 on Test debut in India. “You can sense it as a captain,” Virat Kohli said. “This guy is intelligent. He’s definitely going to be a star in all forms if he keeps persisting with his skill.”
And yet as all this was going on, the world and the game was changing. The joy of watching Hameed in those early days was to wonder if everything might be easy forever, that if you worked hard and followed the rules, you’d be alright. It couldn’t last. He brought up his first first-class hundred on the day of the Brexit referendum. That Test debut came just as it was becoming clear that Donald Trump had won the 2016 US Presidential election. Here came the chaos age. The social contract was broken, and so too was the batter’s deal, the one that posited that the game was about control, that all you really needed was a sure defence and an even temperament.
Wickets worsened. Seam overtook swing. The ball could move either way or go straight through you, with no way to tell which it would do. There is a sadness that the world as we knew it was gone, and, for a while, Hameed struggled to move with the times.
Instead he withdrew, averaging 28.50 in the 2017 County Championship, and just 9.70 the year after, all the while scoring at a subterranean strike rate of under a run every three balls. In 2019 came his first hundred since that breakout summer, but also his release from Lancashire. Paul Allott, the club’s director of cricket, had opted for tough love at the start of that season. “Not only is he a million miles away from England,” he told Wisden Cricket Monthly, “he’s hanging on by his fingertips at Lancashire.”
On arrival at Notts, head coach Peter Moores took the opposite approach. “Young players, the ones that are destined for great things, bounce back,” he said. “We believe that's what's going to happen with Haseeb.” In truth, both Notts and Hameed needed rebuilding. Notts had just been relegated for the second time in four seasons, with their only Division One survival in that time coming when level on points with Lancs. Moores, who has described his partnership with Hameed as “like finding a soulmate”, has resurrected both.
The first challenge was to get Hameed to live a little, and an early net session proved pivotal, just Moores with a dog stick and Hameed with his worries. He deadbatted his first throwdowns. “I told him I’d given Joe Root the same delivery three days before, and he’d hit it for four,” Moores recounted at the time. “I said: ‘Should you have attacked it?’” Hameed took the bait, threw his bat at the next few, and the fog lifted. “We started to see the true Has then.”
His strike rate has nearly doubled since his worst days. This season brought with it a double hundred at not far off a run a ball. To watch him is to see a batter at peace with the worst that could happen, and his revival has been borne out of embracing the flux. There’s no use in mourning what’s been lost. Instead you have to roll with the times. “I have a bank of experience behind me, both in terms of highs and lows,” Hameed told Wisden.com earlier this summer. “They all shape you and develop you as a person and a player. You naturally come to accept everything a bit more. In the game that we play, there are so many ups and downs, so many variables and I think you come to work with that rather than trying to fight it.”
There have still been bad days mixed among the good. 2021 brought two hundreds in a game against Worcestershire, a century against the touring Indians, and then an England recall. In hindsight, and even at the time, it felt too soon, accelerated by the struggles of Joe Root’s side, the paucity of other options, and an overeagerness to capitalise on a special talent finding its way again. Hameed was bowled by the first ball of his comeback, and while he made two fifties in his next two Tests, these gave way to 80 runs combined in four games in Australia, the Covid bubbles taking their toll as Australia’s all-time greats swarmed. This time, however, international disappointment didn’t disrupt his domestic bliss at Notts. “One thing I've always been able to count on, thankfully, is finding a way to get back up from rock bottom,” he told ESPNcricinfo.
2022 was his best summer yet, hitting four centuries to spearhead a Division Two title win, and while his return to the top tier didn’t go as planned, century-less as Notts finished mid-table, he was backed rather than scolded, appointed captain heading into 2024. The job suited him, the fresh-faced boy now a man with a beard, a dressing room ready to follow where he led.
And now this, an unblemished triumph, a team effort with Hameed at its centre. He was the cool head in the decisive victory over Surrey, backing Josh Tongue’s tail-slicing talents, exhorting his star quick to go again and again. And he played the key hand to finish the job against Warwickshire, hitting a fourth hundred of the season to get them close to the two batting bonus points needed for mathematical certainty, and then in the middle as Ben Slater hit the winning runs.
Hameed insists the England story isn’t yet done, and why should it be? A decade in, he is still only 28, not that old but certainly wise. He is now established as the county game’s premier player. As he well knows, Ashes tours often bring upheaval. He should be best placed to benefit. But whatever the future holds, Hameed will always have this season and this title. Those great things for which he was destined have been achieved.
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