England central contracts
England central contracts 2026-27: two years for Crocombe, none for Hill
England’s contract list landed on 12 October with 39 names on it, and the one everybody stopped at was Henry Crocombe, handed two years by the ECB before he has played an international of any kind. George Hill, one of the best county bowlers in the country and a useful batter down the order for Yorkshire, was handed nothing at all. Both are uncapped, both are 25, and the form book has them a long way apart.
Our red-ball ratings rate every first-class bowler ball by ball against the standard of an average Test bowler, allowing for the strength of the batters he faces, so county figures are already marked down for the step up. Among the 137 England-qualified bowlers rated over the last two years, Hill, who is rated on his county cricket alone since he has never played a Test, sits fifth, near the top of our rankings and the highest-rated bowler under 30 after Sam Cook. Crocombe sits 73rd, at 13.9 runs a match worse than an average Test bowler.
Henry Crocombe’s record so far
Crocombe had a summer worth a contract, taking 40 County Championship wickets at 23.5 in ten matches for Sussex in 2026 against a Championship bowling average of 29.0 across the season, and he struck every 37.5 balls. Among the 46 bowlers with 30 or more Championship wickets this summer, only Matthew Potts and Lewis Gregory took their wickets more often. That is a proper season by any measure, and a deal of some kind would have raised no eyebrows.
However, between 2020 and 2025 he took 81 first-class wickets at 38.9 in 40 matches for Sussex, and his best return in any of those seasons was 20 wickets. One very good summer after several quieter ones is a perfectly normal path for a young seamer, and Crocombe has age and improvement on his side; it is also a thin base on which Rob Key and the ECB have built a two-year commitment.
Does pace matter more than county wickets in Test cricket?
Rob Key told The Telegraph in 2025 that he did not care how many wickets a bowler took; he wanted to know how hard he was running in, how hard he was hitting the pitch, and whether he could hold 85 to 88mph. The list reads as though it were written to that brief, and Key has produced no evidence to support his view.
The history he could have weighed cuts both ways. Ollie Robinson, who has never been quick, has taken his Test wickets at 19.3 each across his career, in line with his county record. Mark Wood, among the fastest bowlers England have had, retired from international cricket with 119 Test wickets at 30.8 in 38 Tests. Glenn McGrath was never an express bowler either, and he finished with 563 Test wickets at 21.64.
In men’s first-class cricket since 2021, bowlers described as fast conceded 31.7 runs a wicket against batters with ten or more Tests, against 36.3 for those listed as medium-fast or slower, while against batters with fewer than ten Tests the quick men were no better than the rest. So there is something in the idea, though less than Key would want: pace does hold up better against the best batters, but it narrows a gap rather than opening one, and it is no reason to prefer one good county season over two outstanding ones. There has been some suggestion Crocombe has got quicker of late, though he is still listed as right-arm medium-fast, the same description given to Robinson and Cook.
George Hill, Ben Coad and Jamie Porter
County wickets did get rewarded this time, up to a point, since Robinson, Cook, Matt Fisher and Potts all got one-year deals, Cook and Fisher for the first time, and all four sit high in our red-ball ratings, with Robinson first and Cook second. Robinson’s return after two years without a contract was the obvious call, with 28 Test wickets at 9.3 in four Tests since May 2025, against England’s bowling average of 31.6 in their Tests over that time.
The long deals, however, went on pace and promise, and the county seamers with the best records outside that group got nothing. Hill has taken 99 Championship wickets across 2025 and 2026 at under 18.5 in both seasons, and his 1,168 Championship runs at 28.5 over the same two years are the sort that lengthen a Test tail. A 25-year-old with two outstanding seasons with the ball and runs to go with them is exactly the kind of cricketer a contract system should exist to reward, and Hill has no deal of any kind.
Ben Coad, third in our rankings, took 24 Championship wickets at 20.6 in seven matches for Yorkshire this summer, and he is 32. Jamie Porter, fourth, is 33 and uncapped; his case rests on 2025, when he took 49 Championship wickets at 20.6 for Essex, because his 31 wickets at 30.0 this summer were an ordinary return. Age is the likely reason both were passed over, which leaves England with a question they have never answered out loud: should the results in front of them be the main thing they pick on, or should the years a bowler has ahead of him weigh more? Hill passes both tests, and still went without.
Brydon Carse and the incumbents
Josh Tongue, Jofra Archer and Gus Atkinson hold the other two-year seamers’ deals, and those are the easiest on the list to defend. They are the current incumbents with sound Test records to date, Atkinson with 83 wickets at 25.3 in 21 Tests, Tongue 76 at 26.3 in 15 and Archer 83 at 28.6 in 23, and Archer and Tongue bowled well through this summer’s six home Tests.
Brydon Carse, with a disciplinary case hanging over him, is on a contract that runs to 2027 and was not extended. His cricket has drifted too, with 31 Test wickets at 39.2 since May 2025, a place of 70th in our red-ball ratings and no England appearance since the Ashes in January.
Shoaib Bashir and England’s spinners
Shoaib Bashir keeps his full contract as the only specialist red-ball spinner on the full list despite sitting 118th of the 137 bowlers in our red-ball ratings, with 22 Test wickets since May 2025 at 37.8 each and a County Championship record that is poorer still, 42 wickets at 63.3 from 26 matches. Is this the ECB and Key keeping faith with their own pick to try and save face?
English spin is sparsely stocked at present, but there is one clear pick in Jack Leach, 27th in our rankings and the highest-rated English spinner by a distance after 36 Championship wickets at 20.2 for Somerset this summer, and he has no deal of any kind; he is 35, but spinners are widely thought to mature with age and peak later than seamers, and Leach is the only English spinner our ratings place above an average Test bowler. Below him come Liam Dawson, whose full contract is mostly a white-ball pick, Liam Patterson-White on a development deal, then Dom Bess and Jack Carson with nothing, all well below Leach and all far above Bashir, while Mason Crane, 119th in our rankings, has a development deal too.
Leach has nothing, and the one spinner England chose sits 118th in our rankings.
England’s Test batters
The Test batting deals are much easier to square with the record, since the batters at the top of our Test batting ratings among England-qualified players, from Harry Brook and Joe Root down through Jordan Cox, Dan Lawrence and Emilio Gay, all hold full contracts. Cox’s two years rest on 254 Test runs at 42.3 in four Tests, while Zak Crawley, 23rd in our rankings, loses his deal after averaging 34.4 in 11 Tests since May 2025 and cannot feel too hard done by.
The white-ball contracts
Sonny Baker’s two years at 23 make far more sense as a white-ball deal than a Test one, because he is 80th in our red-ball ratings with three wickets from his one Test, yet third among English bowlers in our T20 ratings, behind only Adil Rashid and Archer.
Aneurin Donald is the highest-rated English T20 batter in our ratings, which take in the Blast, the Hundred, T20 internationals and the franchise leagues, and he sits ahead of Brook. He has 938 runs at a strike rate of 224 in 26 Blast matches across 2025 and 2026, against a strike rate of 142 for every Blast batter taken together, and he has no deal. A central contract gives the ECB more say over a player’s schedule, and a batter of Donald’s ability will be in high demand with franchise sides, which only adds to the case for signing him up. Tom Banton, 12th among English T20 batters and a regular in England’s ODI and T20 sides, is a reasonable pick for his first full contract.
Again, the bowling selections are less defensible, since among English T20 bowlers in our ratings Luke Wood sits 33rd and Saqib Mahmood 41st, yet it is Wood who has dropped off the list and Mahmood who keeps a full contract.
The verdict
Donald aside, the batting selections are largely defensible on the data. The bowling is a different story, and here England are basing a lot on opinion and not much on actual performance. England believe pace matters most at Test level, but on what evidence? Certainly not Robinson’s Test summer.
Line the seamers and spinners up together and the bowling picks look randomly selected rather than based on anything tangible. Hill, Coad, Porter and Leach, who have among the best ball-by-ball, opposition-adjusted records in the country, are the ones left out, and Donald has the strongest white-ball claim of anyone without a deal. Would Bashir be struggling for a county contract next season had the ECB released him?
The form book has plenty to say about England’s bowlers, and Rob Key and the ECB have gone with a hunch instead.