Darren Stevens is the talk of the town. The 45-year-old Kent all-rounder stunned Glamorgan on Friday with a 149-ball 190 and is currently both his side’s leading run-scorer and wicket-taker this season.

A newly-crowned Wisden Cricketer of the Year, Stevens has never played for England, which got us thinking – who are some of the finest England-qualified players to have starred in the County Championship this century, but never played Test cricket?

We’ve come up with a balanced XI who fit the requirements (a point worth making – of active players, we’ve limited ourselves to those over the age of 30).

Stats below are overall first-class records and do not include the ongoing round of County Championship fixtures, beginning on May 19

Daryl Mitchell

217 matches, 13,708 runs @ 39.16, 38 hundreds

A Worcestershire stalwart, Mitchell has 32 County Championship hundreds to his name but was unable to find a way into the England set-up in the post-Strauss era, despite the revolving door of Test openers that followed the left-hander’s retirement.

Mal Loye

264 matches, 15,329 runs @ 39.91, 42 hundreds

Loye averaged 45 in the County Championship in the first decade of this century and while Test cricket never came calling, he did play seven ODIs for England in 2007, finishing that stretch with a high score of 45. He did catch attention during his brief international career when he slog-swept the likes of Brett Lee and Glenn McGrath.

James Hildreth

273 matches, 17,495 runs @ 41.95, 46 hundreds

Arguably the finest English batsman this century to have never played for his country, Hildreth remains in the ranks at Somerset, with 46 first-class hundreds to his name. While runs have been harder to come by in the last couple of years, you only have to go back to 2018 to see Hildreth finish second in the Division One run-scoring charts, with only Rory Burns – who would go on to make his England debut at the end of that year – making more.

David Sales

249 matches, 14,140 runs @ 39.27, 29 hundreds

Sales averaged 46.16 with the bat in the County Championship in the 2000s, passing 1,000 runs in the season five years on the bounce from 2004 to 2008. Despite never playing Test cricket, he did play for England A, averaging 41 and hitting two tons in 11 first-class matches for them.

Sam Northeast

176 matches, 10,635 runs @ 38.53, 25 hundreds

The youngest name on this list, Northeast balanced captaincy with prolific run-making while at Kent – from 2015 to 2017, 41 County Championship games as skipper saw him deliver more than 3,000 runs at an average closing in on 60. At Hampshire now, he may still have time on his side to make an international case.

Darren Stevens

314 matches, 15,940 runs @ 34.65, 35 hundreds | 564 wickets @ 24.54, 30 five-fors

Stevens’ status as a late-blooming all-rounder is perhaps the key cause in him never playing for England in any format – it was only in his late thirties that he really began to take on a role with the ball.

Paul Nixon (wk)

355 matches, 14,498 runs @ 34.35, 21 hundreds | 889 catches, 67 dismissals

Only two men effected more County Championship dismissals behind the stumps than Nixon in the first decade of the century, and he averaged just under 38 with the bat in that time as well. He did enjoy a brief England career at the age of 36, playing at the 2007 World Cup.

Glen Chapple

315 matches, 985 wickets @ 26.71, 39 five-fors

The man who led Lancashire to County Championship glory in 2011, Chapple was unfortunate to only ever take the field for England once, in an ODI against Ireland in 2006. He suffered an injury during the game and that was that for his international career. Domestically, he finished with 985 first-class wickets – and six tons with the bat, too.

Gary Keedy

227 matches, 696 wickets @ 31.39, 35 five-fors

Mushtaq Ahmed and Robert Croft were the only spinners to take more County Championship wickets than left-armer Keedy in the first decade of the century. He was Lancashire’s leading wicket-taker when they won the Championship in 2011, taking 61 wickets at 23.63.

Mark Davies

109 matches, 315 wickets @ 22.42, 13 five-fors

Of bowlers who took at least 100 County Championship wickets in the Noughties, only one had a lower average than Mark Davies – Muttiah Muralitharan. The seamer, who won back-to-back County Championship titles with Durham, was called up as cover during England’s 2009/10 tour of South Africa but never got a cap.

Chris Rushworth

136 matches, 536 wickets @ 22.50, 28 five-fors

Durham’s most prolific first-class wicket-taker, Rushworth’s has become a club legend after bouncing back from the disappointment of being released by the county in 2006. He took 54 wickets at just 22.25 when Durham when the County Championship back in 2013.