SUPER DAN
‘Next big thing’ sure he can be a hit for England
‘I always knew I had the ability to play for my country’
Dan LaWREnCE thinks hard when asked to name a batsman he could be compared with and has tried to emulate, before deciding he would rather just concentrate on being himself.
‘ I’ve created my own style because the way I bat is a little unique,’ says the next big thing of English batting.
‘I like watching how people go about things and try to learn from them — but I don’t think anyone bats how I do, so there’s no one I really resemble.’
It is a typical comment from a confident yet far-from-arrogant character who can count England coach Chris Silverwood among his growing list of important admirers. and that ‘unique’ style now looks certain to earn the batting star of last winter’s Lions tour of australia a Test debut, possibly as soon as next month against West Indies.
‘The way I play has always come completely naturally,’ adds the Essex middle-order batsman. ‘My old man is the groundsman at Chingford Cricket Club, so I grew up in the nets there and built up my own method — and that’s the thing: I’ve always wanted to stay true to the way I play.
‘If there’s a ball there to be hit and I get out hitting it, then I will still continue to be aggressive. I just had to sort out the fundamentals of my game — which I feel I’ve done now — and I hope to score a load of runs.’
It is certainly a very modern style that has perhaps given Lawrence the best chance — among the eight uncapped players named in England’s 30-man training group — of making the final squad for the first Test at the ageas Bowl on July 8.
Lawrence, 22, is a wristy, legside dominant player capable of outrageous shots in white-ball cricket. Crucially, he has recently made a technical adjustment to his game that appears to have unlocked the huge first- class potential he demonstrated as a teenager.
‘I feel my game is in a really good place and I’m thankful I made the changes I did at the end of last season,’ he says.
‘To do that was a bit gutsy at the time but I’m now capable of getting the runs I knew I should have been making. Without blowing my own trumpet, I’ve never really doubted myself. I always thought I had the ability to play for England.
‘It was just frustrating that small, technical things were getting in the way of me scoring a lot more runs. But if I do get the call now, I hope to be in good shape to get going with England.’
Those technical changes — abandoning his trigger movement and staying still at the crease before the bowler delivers the ball — helped Lawrence dominate the ashes dress-rehearsal tour with the Lions, notably with a century in the win against australia a.
‘My movement before wasn’t allowing me to play the shots I knew I could,’ Lawrence, who made a century in just his second championship appearance aged 17, tells
‘It was making the simple things in batting feel very hard. I’d had enough of it, so I started standing still with just a little movement and it’s been really good. When I look at videos of myself batting, some of the shots seem a bit more extravagant than they’ve felt at the time — and maybe more extravagant than they should be.
‘But I’ve always based my game on batting long periods of time. The way people play Twenty20 can be scary and you have to try to keep up with the pace. But although my game might look modern, I just want to score nice, long hundreds.’
Lawrence is a self- confessed cricket ‘badger’, who says he used to own a DVD of the 2005 ashes series and knows ‘every bit of commentary off by heart’.
and he will be hoping to impress his old Essex coach Silverwood when he gets to the Southampton camp on Tuesday. ‘Silvers was not only my Essex coach but also my first second-team coach, so we’ve got a good relationship and he knows how I tick,’ adds Lawrence, who feels he could bat anywhere in the order from three to six for England.
‘He hasn’t seen me for a few years, so he will remember the young Dan who was really unorganised. I’m hoping I can make him realise how much I’ve got everything in order now and it will be nice having someone there who knows what I’m about.
‘It means I can relax at training rather than constantly try to impress someone new. I can go into that environment, do what I do and hopefully that will be enough. It’s lovely to be involved and I’m excited to get going.’