Sam Curran is England's designated No.6, but more flexibility is needed in his role, writes Ben Gardner.
England’s last two T20Is have witnessed the best and worst of Sam Curran, the No.6, and the upshot is that the bad outweighs the good. In the final T20I, against Sri Lanka, he came in inside the powerplay, at 34-4, and got England up to an ultimately defendable score of 128-9. His 58 off 48 was an atypical No.6 innings, but also an invaluable one. It’s also hardly inconceivable that it’s the kind of situation England could find themselves in at a crucial point in the T20 World Cup. Should Jasprit Bumrah or Matt Henry raze the top order, he’s a comfort to have walking out as a firefighting failsafe.
In England’s T20 World Cup opener against Nepal, Curran faced a much more normal situation: 128-4 in the 14th over. Here the remit is accepted. Get set while not putting a stall on the innings, and then go ballistic at the death. Curran failed at both counts, dismissed for two off eight. England scored nine runs in his two overs at the crease.
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Match 5, England vs Nepal
The worry is, this wasn’t an aberration. Curran has now batted 49 times at No.6 in all T20 cricket. Of the 60 to bat there as often, his average of 15.50 is the lowest of all time. Curran is not good at the standard T20 No.6 stuff, a fact that explains why he was, to start with, a fringe figure in Brendon McCullum’s T20I XIs. He is a good top-order batter in T20 cricket, albeit just below the level of England’s established top five. And he is a bad finisher in T20 cricket, by the usual metrics.
Also read: Why Sam Curran can take on Ben Stokes role in hunt for T20 World Cup glory
Once Curran departed the scene, Will Jacks came out and showed what they had been missing. He clobbered an unbeaten 39 off 18 balls, taking the total past 180 and ultimately out of Nepal’s range. Curran’s struggle didn’t cost them today. On other days, however, it could.
The comfort for England is they don’t necessarily need him to be a good finisher. It can be hard to work out exactly what job Curran is going to do on a given day, but, in a close game, he will almost always do something. On some days, he’s the batting safeguard, knocking around singles in a tense chase or rebuilding after a collapse.
His bowling is hard to pigeonhole, but gives another option in a team that thrives on always having another place to turn. He showed that against Nepal, taking the key wicket of Dipendra Singh Airee just after he had taken down Adil Rashid, and just as the Associate side were beginning to dream. Then, with 10 needed off the last, he saved England from defeat with a boundaryless over. He is worth his place in the XI.
That only makes their use of him batting first more curious. Curran’s best skills are analysing tricky game situations and holding his nerve under pressure. He thrives on nuance and complexity. Asking him to come out and whack sixes from ball one misreads what makes him good. When England need someone to do the job a No.6 would usually do, there will normally be someone better, Jacks or Jamie Overton or even Jofra Archer’s long levers. Let them do the finishing. Curran’s job is to reshape the games going the wrong way.
