Batting at number three, he came to the crease with the scorecard showing 17-1. He marshalled the innings from there, bringing his fifty up off 69 balls and his hundred off 110 balls. Hain then flicked the switch and accelerated, smashing the ball to all parts of the ground. He finished on Warwickshire’s second highest List A score of all-time, only behind West Indies legend Alvin Kallicharran’s 206 against Oxfordshire in 1984, as his side scored 100 off the final 10 overs of their innings. 

Who is he?

Born in Hong Kong to two English parents, Hain spent most of his youth growing up in Queensland, Australia. He made his way into the Australia under 19s when he was just 16 years old but his heart lay elsewhere. “I was always set to play in England, ever since I was 14,” he said.

[caption id=”attachment_101653″ align=”alignnone” width=”800″] Hain has broken plenty of Bell’s records at Warwickshire[/caption]

His  big break came while on an exchange at Edinburgh’s Lorretto School in 2013, where he was spotted by former Warwickshire captain Michael Powell. Powell sent him for a trial at Warwickshire, at which then-Warwickshire and current Surrey all-rounder Rikki Clarke rating Hain’s batting in the nets as the he’d ever seen.

Hain made his second XI debut that year and won Warwickshire’s most promising player award. A muscly right hander, he made his first-class debut the following year in 2014, notching his maiden first-class century five games into his career against Northamptonshire, breaking Ian Bell’s record as the youngest player to score a first-class century for Warwickshire at just 18 years and 336 days. Hain’s career-best score of 208 came later in the same season in the reverse fixture against the same opposition, again breaking Bell’s mark as the youngest to do so for the Bears. He finished the season as Warwickshire’s top scorer with 823 runs at 51.43 with four centuries as the team finished second to Yorkshire.

While he made his List A debut in 2013, Hain’s value to Warwickshire in the One-day Cup became apparent in their trophy winning season of 2016, when he made 540 runs at an average of 60.00. The following year in 2017 he made 532 runs at an average of 66.50, while in 2018 he made 426 runs at a heady 106.50. He started his 2019 one-day campaign slowly, but his 161* at the weekend still brings his season average to 66.75. Still only 23 years-old, his latest ton is already the tenth of his List A career.

[caption id=”attachment_104709″ align=”alignnone” width=”800″] Hain (Left) played for Australia under 19s in the 2012 ICC under 19s Cricket World Cup[/caption]

Tough times

While he made a record-breaking start to his first-class cricket career, he has struggled in seasons since to rediscover that kind of form. 2016 and 2017 brought him averages of just 22.75 and 15.42 respectively in Division One of the County Championship. His 2018 average of 35.37 is closer to where he’ll want to be, but he hasn’t scored a century in the competition since 2016. In 2018, ex-Warwickshire director of sport and current England Men’s managing director of cricket Ashley Giles said this drop in red-ball production was because Hain “gets his balance wrong at times, which affects his alignment.”

Challenges

With the retirement of Jonathan Trott and the injury to Ian Bell, Hain’s place in an increasingly youthful Warwickshire side is sealed. His immediate challenge is trying to turn around Warwickshire’s campaign in the Royal London One-Day Cup. They currently sit seventh in the North Group with only one win (Hain-inspired) in five games.

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Rediscovering his form in the County Championship will be next on his agenda, and no doubt he will be burning to break his run of three seasons without a hundred in the competition.

What a day @WarwickshireCCC‘s Sam Hain is having!

First with the bat he cracks 161* off 141 balls, finishing with a List A average of 58.52, a world record, and then in the field he pulls off this Jonty Rhodes-esque run out!

What a player!pic.twitter.com/FomcpjhynE

— Wisden (@WisdenCricket) April 28, 2019

The Final Word

“If he carries on the work he’s done this winter, I have no doubt he’ll fly and have a fantastic career in red-ball cricket. That is his final frontier. If he can crack that, I’m a big believer that he’ll play red-ball cricket for England within 12 months.” – Ashley Giles, speaking in March 2018.