England central contracts
Twenty-one wickets at 8.76 and the England contracts still to come
Ollie Robinson took 21 wickets at 8.76 in England’s 3-0 win over Pakistan this summer and was named player of the series. He went into it without an England contract, having lost his in October 2024, and he wasn’t picked for the Ashes.
The ECB’s next list is due in early October. Will Macpherson reported in The Telegraph on 24 September that Robinson “will return to the contracts list after two years away”. He named Jordan Cox, Emilio Gay and Dan Lawrence as likely first-timers, with “the likes of Matt Fisher and Sam Cook also in line to receive one” and Tom Banton expected on the white-ball side. Zak Crawley is “expected to lose” his deal. We ran every England-qualified player through our ratings to see who has earned one.
Fourteen places already taken
Last November the ECB handed out 14 two-year deals that run to September 2027: Jofra Archer, Gus Atkinson, Jacob Bethell, Harry Brook, Jos Buttler, Brydon Carse, Sam Curran, Ben Duckett, Will Jacks, Adil Rashid, Joe Root, Jamie Smith, Ben Stokes and Josh Tongue. Stokes has since retired. This autumn’s decisions are over the 12 one-year deals that end on 30 September, and who takes those places.
Most of those two-year players have earned them. Brook and Root are the two highest-rated Test batters in our world rankings, with Duckett fourth. Rashid is England’s highest-rated T20 bowler, and Archer is second.
Carse’s deal is the one our ratings would struggle to justify. He was England’s leading wicket-taker in the Ashes with 22, but has 31 Test wickets at 39.2 since May 2025, while England’s bowlers as a whole averaged 31.6 in those Tests. Our ratings, which cover all first-class cricket and allow for the level of each competition, put him 73rd of 133 England-qualified bowlers: England’s players from the last three years and every English county bowler since 2025, leaving out the overseas players. He hasn’t played a Test since Sydney in January. In August the ECB opened an investigation after footage showed him handcuffed by police outside a Derby nightclub; he was detained briefly and not arrested. On form and conduct his case is weak, but his contract runs for another year whatever the ECB decides this month.
The attack that stayed at home
Robinson is the best Test bowler in the world by our ratings, just ahead of Jasprit Bumrah. He has 104 Test wickets at 19.3 in 24 Tests. The four Tests since his recall were all at home, in English conditions, against New Zealand and Pakistan, but he got there on county form as well: 57 County Championship wickets at 25.2 for Sussex over the last two seasons, against the competition average of 31.5.
Next on our list is Sam Cook. The Essex seamer has taken 56 Championship wickets at 24.7 over the same two seasons, and 40 at 20.5 this summer alone. He has played one Test, against Zimbabwe at Trent Bridge in May 2025, taking one wicket, and was added to the squad for the final Pakistan Test without playing. On our ratings he should be the first new name on the list.
Jamie Porter, Cook’s new-ball partner at Essex, has 80 Championship wickets at 24.2 across 2025 and 2026 and has never been capped. George Hill of Yorkshire has 95 Championship wickets at 17.3 over the same two seasons, the best average of any English bowler with 40 or more. Hill also bats, averaging 26.3 in the Championship over those seasons. With Stokes gone, he is the obvious seam-bowling all-rounder to look at.
Matthew Potts, whose one-year deal is up, and Matt Fisher, whom the Telegraph expects to get one, both rate above every seamer on a two-year deal. Potts has 87 Championship wickets at 25.5 for Durham over the last two seasons, and Fisher 66 at 29.7 for Surrey.
Ben Coad and Ben Sanderson rate highly too, but on longer records. Coad’s 34 Championship wickets over the last two seasons have cost 31.1 apiece, and Sanderson turns 38 in January.
Shoaib Bashir and the spinner’s place
Shoaib Bashir’s one-year deal ends on 30 September. England have backed him since his first call-up in 2023, and his Test figures since May 2025 are 22 wickets at 37.8. In the Championship over the last two seasons, mostly for Derbyshire this summer, he has 26 wickets at 50.6. Our ratings put him 116th of 133 England-qualified first-class bowlers.
The English spinner we rate highest is Jack Leach, who lost his deal last year. He has 83 Championship wickets at 21.2 for Somerset over the last two seasons, and 31 at 18.6 this summer. He is 35, so any recall would be for the short term. No other English spinner in our ratings comes close. Liam Dawson, England’s other left-arm spinner, is 43rd in our Test ratings.
Batters who have already made the case
Jordan Cox has played four Tests, with 254 runs at 42.3, and averages 71.2 in nine Championship matches for Essex over the last two seasons. He is our fourth-highest-rated English Test batter, behind only Brook, Root and Duckett. Four Tests, all in an English summer, is a thin record to hand anyone a contract on, but the Telegraph expects him to get one and we would too.
Dan Lawrence made 187 runs at 46.8 in three Tests against Pakistan after a Championship run of 1,710 at 59.0 over two seasons for Surrey, against the competition’s batting average of 30.4. He is fifth on our list.
Emilio Gay is the Telegraph’s surest bet. He has made four Championship hundreds for Durham this summer and averages 53.8 in the competition over two seasons. His six Tests have brought three half-centuries and an average just under 25, and our ratings place him eighth. That is still a place below Ollie Pope, whose one-year deal is also up. Pope was dropped for the New Zealand series and came back into the squad against Pakistan. He has 602 Test runs at 37.6 since May 2025 and is seventh on our list.
Crawley is 30th. He averages 34.4 in Tests since May 2025 and 29.0 in the Championship for Kent. The data agrees with the Telegraph’s reporting there.
A white-ball contract for Aneurin Donald
The biggest white-ball gap is at the top of the order. Aneurin Donald is the highest-rated English T20 batter by our ratings, which cover the Blast, the Hundred, T20 internationals and the franchise leagues. He is ahead of Brook. In the last two Blast seasons he has made 938 runs for Derbyshire at a strike rate of 224, against the Blast average of 142. He made his England debut against Sri Lanka this month.
Banton is 13th among English T20 batters by our ratings. He scored 470 runs at a strike rate of 152 in 22 T20 internationals since the start of 2025, and made a hundred in the last ODI against Sri Lanka on Sunday. Macpherson called him a “white-ball regular”, and a contract would reward that. On our ratings, Donald has the stronger claim.
England’s white-ball deals already follow the ratings more closely than the Test deals: Brook, Jacks, Buttler, Salt, Rashid, Archer and Dawson all rate near the top. The results have matched. Since May 2025 England have won 22 T20 internationals and lost three, while the Test side has won eight and lost eight. The ODI side, eight wins and seven defeats, sits in between.
The one-year white-ball bowlers have less of a case. Luke Wood is 42nd among English T20 bowlers by our ratings, Saqib Mahmood 51st and Jamie Overton 30th. Sonny Baker is 13th and Rehan Ahmed 36th. Dawson, fifth, keeps his place on white-ball form.
Where England play next
The contracts cover the year to September 2027, and half of its Tests are away. England play three Tests in South Africa over Christmas, at the Wanderers, Centurion and Newlands. Two follow in Bangladesh in February, then a day-night Test at the MCG in March. The summer brings one Test against Bangladesh at Lord’s and a home Ashes.
That helps Carse more than anyone. He has 49 wickets at 24.6 in ten Tests away from England and nine at 60.9 in four at home, so the South Africa tour is where his deal can earn its keep. Robinson’s away record is weaker than his home one: 26 wickets at 28.0 in ten Tests abroad, against 78 at 16.3 in England. Cook has never bowled in a Test overseas, so Johannesburg and Centurion would be new ground for him.
Bangladesh makes the spinner’s place matter. Leach has 97 wickets at 36.5 in 24 Tests away from England, and Bashir 34 at 42.0 in nine. Then the Ashes come home, to the conditions where Robinson, Cook and Porter have made their names. The 50-over World Cup follows in South Africa, Zimbabwe and Namibia in October 2027, just after these contracts end.
Our list
| Player | Deal now | Our call |
|---|---|---|
| Ollie Robinson | None | New deal |
| Sam Cook | None | New deal |
| Jamie Porter | None | New deal |
| George Hill | None | New deal |
| Jack Leach | None | New deal |
| Matt Fisher | None | New deal |
| Jordan Cox | None | New deal |
| Dan Lawrence | None | New deal |
| Emilio Gay | None | New deal |
| Aneurin Donald | None | New deal |
| Ollie Pope | One-year | Keep |
| Matthew Potts | One-year | Keep |
| Phil Salt | One-year | Keep |
| Liam Dawson | One-year | Keep |
| Zak Crawley | One-year | Let go |
| Shoaib Bashir | One-year | Let go |
| Saqib Mahmood | One-year | Let go |
| Luke Wood | One-year | Let go |
| Jamie Overton | One-year | Let go |
| Sonny Baker | One-year | Let go |
| Rehan Ahmed | One-year | Let go |
Why the list keeps missing
When England named their Ashes squad on 23 September 2025, our ratings had Cook, Coad, Robinson and Porter as the four best English Test bowlers. None of them went to Australia. England took Archer, Atkinson, Carse, Tongue, Mark Wood and Matthew Potts, with Bashir as the spinner. Carse and Bashir were 70th and 115th among English first-class bowlers that day. Australia won the series 4-1.
The selectors weren’t hiding their reasons. Rob Key had told The Telegraph: “I don’t care how many wickets you take. I want to know how hard you are running in, how hard you are hitting the pitch, and are you able to sustain pace at 85-88mph?” In November, ESPNcricinfo’s Matt Roller noted that six of England’s seven seamers in Australia had been clocked above 90mph in Test cricket. James Anderson said of the attack on the Tailenders podcast: “I don’t see a leader of the attack. There’s not that experience there.”
Pace does matter in Australia, and county wickets with a Dukes ball in April don’t transfer cleanly to Perth. Even allowing for the gap between county and Test cricket, the county seamers came out on top in our ratings. Robinson’s summer has since shown what that kind of bowler can do in Test cricket.
The review after the Ashes admitted some of this. Key said: “One of my mistakes is really thinking that I never wanted to get involved in county cricket.” England appointed Marcus North, who had been Durham’s director of cricket, as national selector in May. Sussex coach Paul Farbrace put the county view more bluntly in March: “I know a lot of county players who think unless their face fits, they are not going to play for England.”
Robinson’s recall shows the fit is changing. The list due next month will show whether it has changed enough for Cook, Porter, Hill and Leach.