Dan Worrall was named a Wisden Cricketer of the Year for 2024. Adam Collins’ piece on Worrall originally appeared in the 2025 edition of Wisden Cricketer’s Almanack.
The Five Cricketers of the Year represent a tradition that dates back to 1889, making this the oldest individual award in cricket. The Five are picked by the editor, and the selection is based, primarily but not exclusively, on excellence in and/or influence on the previous English season. No one can be chosen more than once.
Why did one of Australia’s most skilful bowlers leave home to start again in England? The answer, in part, was takeaway food. Among the effects of Covid was the growth of Uber Eats, and Dan Worrall was no fan. “One of the things that was a catalyst for me not enjoying Australian cricket was food delivery,” he explains. “When I first started, you’d go out every night for dinner. After that, silly as it sounds, it killed the fun.”
The option of using his British passport, and relocating as a local, had been rattling around in Worrall’s head while he was playing closed-door Big Bash games during the pandemic. “It sapped all the enjoyment,” he says. “That, and youngsters preferring PlayStation and sitting on their beds, rather than going out and just living … it culminated in the opportunity arising in England.”
In 2021, he rejoined Gloucestershire, for whom he had played four Championship matches three seasons earlier, and made an impression on Surrey’s South African batter Hashim Amla during a match at The Oval. In the car park after play, Alec Stewart – Surrey’s director of cricket – asked him if he wanted to join. Things moved quickly, and Worrall was soon into his stride, employing the diagonal run-up which mirrors his preference for approaching life from a different angle. Last summer, his 52 wickets at 16 – including match figures of 8-91 against Hampshire, 10-57 against Worcestershire and 8-73 against Durham, all at The Oval – laid the foundation for Surrey’s third successive Championship title.
English conditions agree with a relentlessly accurate seamer who can make the Dukes ball talk. Worrall’s first experience of it had been in 2015, for Berkswell in the Birmingham League. “The Dukes has all the variables I use, swinging a bit or a lot… wide on the crease, closer in… have it nibble back in, or go away. With those cards in my hand, I was thinking: ‘This is good fun.’”
It led to new heights at home, with South Australia making a rare Sheffield Shield final: Worrall’s highlights included eight wickets in a win at the MCG, and a six-for in the final. When he followed that with eye-catching performances in the Big Bash, he earned an Australia call-up for a tour of South Africa in 2016/17. Some of the country’s best quicks might have been resting, but Worrall is proud of his three ODI caps: “I still played for the No.1 side in the world.”
His first stint with Gloucestershire was ended by a foot injury – his ankle had been strapped too tightly – but he loved it. Three of his four games were on slopes: Canterbury, Hove, Lord’s. “I remember thinking, does no one survey any of these grounds?” Recovered from injury, he started the new Shield season with ten wickets against Western Australia. On returning to Bristol, he suffered three stress fractures of the back, ruling out any chance of the 2019 Ashes. Summoned home for rehabilitation, he refused to go. As he took a call from the South Australian team doctor at a service station between London and Bristol, he considered calling it a day. “I said: ‘I’m happy to retire. I’ve got my uni degree. I’ll be fine.’ I just wasn’t ready to go back to rehab.”
He didn’t quit, but he did stay in the UK, spending time with his Gloucestershire team-mates, and working in an Oxfam bookshop in Bristol. He spent all his money travelling on the continent with his partner, Hayley. “Ever since, I’ve considered cricket a free hit.”
DANIEL JAMES WORRALL was born in Melbourne on July 10, 1991. A kid of the working-class western suburbs, he recalls a “standard Aussie upbringing”. Cricket wasn’t front and centre: because of his English and Irish lineage, he preferred football and rugby. He was, though, talented enough to get a chance in the lower grades at Melbourne Cricket Club – as a teenage leg-spinner who opened the batting. But his heart wasn’t in it: “I used to skip training to play nine holes of golf, or have a round of beers at the pub.” He was also studying for a commerce degree, and driving a delivery truck to earn money. “I honestly never had any thought of playing professional cricket.” Then, at 20, he grew ten centimetres, and began bulking up. “I bowled quicker, and had a lot more fun – instead of being hit for six over my head bowling leg-spin. That’s how it started.”
His home state of Victoria, though, had half a dozen bowlers ahead of him. That was less of an issue at South Australia: “I’ve always been an adventurer, so I thought I’d live in Adelaide for a year.” On his first-class debut in 2012/13, his victims included Usman Khawaja.
A decade on, he has not regretted his move to Surrey, where he has taken 139 Championship wickets in the three title-winning seasons at just 21 each. “There’s not one day I’ve wished I was somewhere else,” he says. “Surrey felt like all I’ve been missing. The guys are weirdly humble. The outside view is different. But coming into the dressing-room as an outsider, I’ve never seen cohesion like it.”
Making London his home, and with two young children – Florence and Arthur – he is “well and truly grounded”. And it has not been lost on managing director Rob Key that Worrall was eligible to play for England as of April 2025. Could it happen? “I’d love the opportunity,” he says. “As a 33-year-old, I’m at my ceiling. So I wouldn’t be there as a project player. I’d be there to do a job they need doing for however long. I’m proud of having proven myself. So, if an England chance comes, I’d take it with open arms.”
If it doesn’t, you’ll find him doing his thing at The Oval. “I seriously think I’m the luckiest bloke. It’s ridiculous that I’ve been able to have cricket as such a big part of my life, having met so many great people and had the chance to travel the world and, really, not have a job.” The fun continues.
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