‘I am not going to stress about an England recall’
➤James Vince started the new season with a double century and is a better player than at the time of his last Test in 2018
James Vince wants you to know one thing. However he can make it look, it is not easy. “I’m used to seeing people make comments like that,” Vince says, politely aggrieved that he should have to point out something so obvious. “It’s not a case of me batting and thinking, ‘I’ve had enough, this is too easy, I’m just going to get out’, which is kind of what some people think.”
But then this is the stylist’s curse: forever to be accused of frittering away their talent. The mundane truth, of course, is, however elegant – and the Vince cover drive is as pristine as royal finery – they are trying just as hard as everyone else.
“People say you make it look easy or whatever. There’s not many days where you feel it’s easy,” he says. “Sometimes you know if you’ve made a poor shot to a ball that wasn’t there to be hit – you know that it was a bad decision. It doesn’t mean at the time you were trying to get out.”
But, just occasionally, there are moments when it all comes together, and it can feel almost as easy as it looks. Vince’s remarkable start to the summer – 231 from 220 balls against Leicestershire in Hampshire’s County Championship opener – was one such instance. “Probably last week is as close as it gets – everything feeling like you’re in that rhythm and you can do what you want,” he says.
Vince turned 30 last month, a natural juncture for anyone to evaluate their career so far. For all that Vince has infuriated England fans, who believe his talents should have been converted into far more than 13 Tests and an average of 24.9, he is closing in on 10,000 first-class runs at a tick below 40 apiece, is much coveted in T20 leagues and has 36 centuries in professional cricket.
“I’ve done reasonably well but you can always find a few more runs in there,” is his assessment. Vince’s languid demeanour at the crease conceals that he is a fierce selfcritic. “You always want more, or feel like you could do better. It’s just the way I am – I don’t think it’s necessarily a good or bad thing, it probably helps me that I try and improve and do more rather than be satisfied.”
It can be easy to think of Vince’s career on endless loop: the same montage of dreams, drives and disconcerting wafts to the slips. Yet this idea obscures that, unobtrusively, Vince is a better player than the one who played his last Test in Christch- urch just before the 2018 summer. The improvements have been most obvious in T20 cricket. Consecutive 90-plus scores in the playoff and final helped Sydney Sixers retain the Big Bash title, and Vince also enjoyed an impressive Pakistan Super League campaign last winter. But, given England’s abundance of top-order options in the 20-over game, perhaps more relevant is the idea that Vince has improved in first-class cricket. In all County Championship or Bob Willis Trophy cricket, his average has risen from 37.6 until 2018 to 45.8 since. Only three England-qualified batsmen – Ollie Pope, Rory Burns and Dom Sibley – to play 25 Championship or Bob Willis Trophy innings average more in this time.
“Whom the gods wish to destroy they first call promising,” the writer Cyril Connolly famously observed. At times earlier in his career, Vince could be a little overwhelmed by expectations.
“It was more just the pressure. If you have a good season or a few good knocks and if you sort of see your name mentioned or whatever and then I guess just wanting it a bit too much.” Now, he is “more relaxed”.
Vince’s nature is soft-spoken, not the sort to make grand pronouncements about what he can achieve or winning an England recall.
“I’d love to but it’s not something I’m going to think about every day or stress about. One thing you do get better at is just worrying about stuff that actually you can control. It makes life in cricket a bit more enjoyable if you’re not stressing about stuff that you can’t control.
“As you get older, the more cricket you play, you’ve got a bit more stuff to lean on. I feel comfortable where my game’s at. I’ve built confidence in how I’m playing at the minute that I’m really going to score runs. I think that’s half the battle.”
You sense that Vince is at peace: he has, after all, built a career that almost all his contemporaries would envy. His hope – and England’s, too – is that the best is yet to come.