Harry Brook

In the winter of 2022-23, Harry Brook announced himself as one of the world's most exciting young players with a staggering run of form across formats, most particularly in England's rebooted Test team. After making his debut against South Africa in September 2022, Brook travelled to Pakistan and New Zealand with Ben Stokes' team, where he peeled off consecutive scores of 153, 87, 9, 111, 89, 54, and 186 to take his overall tally to 809 runs in nine innings, at an extraordinary strike-rate of 98.77. No player in Test history had started with a bigger bang - Vinod Kambli had 796 runs after his own ninth innings - and not even Brook's anticlimactic tenth innings (run out without facing in England's thrilling one-run defeat at Wellington) could take the gloss off his achievement.

By then, Brook was also a T20 World Cup winner, after featuring in England's triumph in Australia earlier in the winter, and at the IPL auction in December, he was snapped up by Sunrisers Hyderabad for Rs 13.25 crore (£1.3 million).

A former England U19s captain, Brook had flickered in Yorkshire colours over the first couple of years of his professional career, most notably when scoring a maiden first-class hundred at Chelmsford in 2018, as the visitors recovered from being bowled out for 50 in their first innings to inflict defeat on reigning champions Essex. He recorded a List A hundred at the start of Yorkshire's 2019 Royal London Cup campaign, and showed signs of greater consistency the following summer when he averaged 43.00 in the Bob Willis Trophy.

But his form in the Blast - first as a finisher in 2020, then shifting up to No. 4 in 2021 - was enough for him to be touted as a future England player, and an innings of 62 from 31 balls in the Northern Superchargers' first Hundred game led Stokes to echo that sentiment. He is particularly strong against seamers, hitting down the ground, or over midwicket and the covers, and has become innovative too, reverse-lapping and scooping in the death overs.

Brook, an orderly young batsman, won 1st XI recognition midway through 2017 courtesy of an impressive run of scores in the second team, the highlight of which was a matchwinning century in a one-day final against Middlesex at Headingley. A product of the Burley-in-Wharfedale club, and Sedburgh School, Brook had already toured India with England Under-19s at that stage and he captained them later in the year in 50-over cricket in the return series against the Indians.

He led from the front, initially at least, at the 2018 U19 World Cup, where he finished as England's leading run-scorer. But he made a golden duck in the quarter-final defeat to Australia and was then dropped for their final game, a seventh-place play-off against New Zealand, for disciplinary reasons.
ESPNcricinfo staff