Howell knuckled down to become a terror in T20

FOUR years ago, Benny Howell went on holiday to Miami and when he returned he had fallen in love – both with baseball and his future wife.

Now, the Gloucestershire allrounder is proving himself as one of the English white-ball game’s most artful bowlers. No-one has taken more wickets over the last two years of the T20 Blast – 33 and counting.

And the 28-year-old believes his reinvigorated specialised cricketing career – he has not played with a red ball this season – can all be traced back to that American trip.

“I went to watch the Miami Marlins against the Philadelphia Phillies – it was actually the same holiday on which I met my now wife Cinthia,” he said.

“But that trip played a huge role in me falling back in love with cricket, I had lost it a bit.

“I am not someone who wants to just float through, I have got ambition to go places, and I felt like that was happening to me in county cricket.

“I was actually even thinking about trying out baseball but I watched them play and thought I could use some of that in cricket.

“It is amazing how a pitcher uses his variations, they have to put it in the strike zone but they still manage to beat the batter.

“The similarities between the two are massive, just huge. The aim of the game is basically the same, they just get there slightly differently!”

One of the key variations used by pitchers in baseball is the knuckleball, which Howell has used to devastating effect. He has three variations, named the Bubble, the Bordeaux (after the city in France where he was born) and the Buckle.

“Each is slightly different, both in the flight, the different areas of the pitch that they land and what they do off the pitch,” said Howell – who has even played competitive club baseball in Australia when wintering Down Under.

“I am still perfecting what each of them does and working out the best way to use them. I’m an outside-the-box thinker, I love to create and try new things – I don’t want to finish my career thinking, ‘what if I had tried that?’ I want to leave my mark.”

Howell came through the ranks at Gloucestershire as a red-ball all-rounder but now finds himself travelling the world for T20 – he has re-signed with the Khulna Titans in the Bangladesh PL for next season and came close to a Big Bash call-up last year when Dwayne Bravo was injured.

With an Australian mother, he could be an attractive option down the line for the Baggy Greens but it is for England that he still dreams of playing.

“I want to play at the highest level and I believe I am good enough. I just want that chance,” added Howell. “Hopefully they see me as a player who can offer something a bit different, a spinner in the middle overs or a death bowler who can also hit runs down the order.”