Laurie Evans and Sam Hain make virtue of versatility in pitch for selection
Matt Roller03-Apr-2022Counties are putting the finishing touches to their pre-season preparations ahead of the first round of Championship fixtures on Thursday, but at the start of the week, 250 England-qualified players will be anxiously checking their phones.The Hundred draft will be staged behind closed doors on Monday morning, with picks due to be confirmed publicly on Tuesday afternoon, and uncontracted domestic players will be competing for 25 vacant spots across the eight teams’ squads on top of the 17 overseas slots that will be filled.There are some roles where the supply of domestic options will massively outweigh the demand. With the best players in the T20 Blast generally shuffling up the order for their counties in order to face as many balls as possible, there is a huge stock of opening batters, while there are also plenty of domestic left-arm spinners up for grabs.But there is a scarcity value on middle-order batters, which was evident in the first season of the Hundred: the champions, Southern Brave, used Alex Davies – generally a top-three batter for Lancashire – as a No. 4, while beaten finalists Birmingham Phoenix often picked Gloucestershire opener Miles Hammond to bat at No. 5.Related
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“It seemed like teams were thinking ‘we need a batsman’ rather than thinking ‘we need a No. 5’ so it was a hard thing to balance your team,” Rob Key, who covered the Hundred’s first season for Sky, says. “Some teams ended up with seven really good batsmen, but five of them were top-order players. And then some teams got to the thing itself and thought ‘shit, one of these guys will have to bat No. 5.'”As a result, the handful of specialist middle-order players who are available on Monday are hoping that their versatility will make them desirable choices, as Hundred teams learn from the mistakes they made in the competition’s first season. There will be further opportunities through the wildcard draft or inevitable replacement vacancies before the tournament start in August, but the draft will give players an indication of where they sit in teams’ thinking.”There’s quite a few guys around the county circuit in the same boat as me,” says Sam Hain, Warwickshire’s all-time leading T20 run-scorer who made a single appearance in the Hundred’s first season after signing for Manchester Originals as an injury replacement for Wayne Madsen. “It is nerve-wracking: you don’t know what teams are looking for and how they’re looking to shape their squads. All I can do is sit back and see what cards I’m dealt.””It’s exciting: I could end up anywhere,” adds Laurie Evans, who played one of the Hundred’s standout innings in 2021, rescuing Oval Invincibles’ run chase against London Spirit, but could not agree a contract with them before the retention window closed. “When people ask me where I bat, I could probably say No. 1 to No. 7. Added to my experience, that hopefully makes me quite a good pick for most squads: you can chuck me in most places and I’ll find a way of making a success of it.”Evans was offered a contract at Invincibles but opted to return to the draft, with his stock at an all-time high after his match-winning performance in the Big Bash final and a lingering frustration about his role last year – never coming in before No. 5, and once as low as No. 8.