James Vince

An elegant stroke player, James Vince was a sports fanatic from a very young age. Before making his professional debut in cricket, Vince was part of the Reading Football Club for three years. Compared with the likes of Michael Vaughan, he has the ability to handle pressure in crucial situations.

Vince broke into the Hampshire side in 2009, after the retirement of John Crawley. His breakthrough season came in 2013 when he amassed 1215 runs with five centuries and finished as the leading run-scorer for Hampshire in the 2013 County Championship. Vince also finished as the leading run-scorer in England’s domestic T20 tournament in 2015, which guaranteed him a place in England's three-match T20I squad against Pakistan in UAE. Vince made his T20 debut against the Men in Green on November 26th, 2015, and scored an invaluable 41 in a 14-run victory on debut.

Backed up by amazing T20 performances for Hampshire and Karachi Kings, he was included in the 2016 ICC T20 World Cup squad and played just one match against Afghanistan when he scored 22 runs in a low-scoring encounter. Consistent form for Hampshire in 2016 led to his Test debut against Sri Lanka in Leeds.

Following a year out of international cricket, Vince was surprisingly included in England’s squad for the 2017-18 Ashes Series. In the first match of the series, he notched up his maiden fifty before being run-out on 83. However, it was downhill from there for him managing just 156 runs in his next eight innings. Vince will be remembered for being the victim of a peach of a delivery from Mitchell Starc during the Perth Test, where the left-armer took his stumps out from around the wicket with a vicious outswinger pitched at the tramlines, coming from an unplayable angle.

Regarded as a white-ball specialist, Vince was a pivotal part leading the Sydney Sixers to back-to-back Big Bash League(BBL) titles in the 2019 and 2020 seasons. After a string of amazing performances in the limited-overs format, Vince was a part of the World Cup-winning England squad in 2019. One successful tournament led to another when he notched up 537 runs in 16 innings in the recently concluded BBL and smashed 95 runs in the finals leading the Sixers to an easy 27-run victory. He received an England call-up ahead of the white-ball series against Pakistan later in the year.

(As of July 2021)