Denly has the all-round game to be a threat in any format
England have missed a trick by picking Kent man only for Test series when he could be perfect ODI fit
Joe Denly, the Most Valuable Player of 2018 according to the Professional Cricketers’ Association, merited selection for England’s tour of Sri Lanka. What is controversial is that he was chosen for the Test squad, not for the party that flew to Colombo this weekend to play five one-day internationals.
In this summer’s Royal London 50-over competition, Denly was not only Kent’s leading run-scorer and wicket-taker, the PCA also chose him as its Most Valuable Player of the whole tournament. It was not quite enough for Kent to win the 50-over final at Lord’s against Hampshire, but Denly’s vastly improved wrist-spin was a valuable ingredient in the county’s revival.
His previous Kent captains, notably Rob Key and Sam Northeast, had never rated Denly’s leg-spin but with Sam Billings, the new captain, away at the Indian Premier League at the start of this summer, Denly was temporary captain and took the chance to bowl himself.
In the T20 Vitality Blast, Denly was again selected by the PCA as the MVP of the whole competition. For Kent against Surrey at the Kia Oval, he had the perfect game when scoring a century and taking a hat-trick.
Who better, therefore, to replace Moeen Ali if he were ill or injured on the eve of next summer’s World Cup? Denly, 32, can bat anywhere in the top order and get through 10 overs, like Moeen, whereas nobody else can quite fill that bill.
Sri Lanka would have been the right place to recall Denly, who had a brief taste of ODIs and T20 internationals in 2009-10: in the heat, on spinning pitches, there would be a case for playing three spinners in Moeen, Adil Rashid and Denly, ahead of Liam Dawson for being the more accomplished batsman.
But no, England’s selectors have chosen Denly for the Test squad. Alastair Cook has retired from the international game, Keaton Jennings has been selected but has yet to make the Test grade, and therefore two other potential openers have been chosen in Rory Burns, Surrey’s championship-winning captain, and Denly.
In the championship it was not such a prolific run-scoring season for Denly or anybody else at Canterbury, where visiting teams took one look at the pitch and sent the home side in to bat.
Denly scored most runs for his county, 828 at an average of 34 per innings, but this was Division Two. The fact that he has had only two seasons of averaging more than 30 in the top division, one at Kent and the other at Middlesex, makes this the most controversial selection for a Test squad by the new panel under Ed Smith. However, Smith knows his man from the time he played for Kent.
“I was very young, 17, when I joined the staff and Ed was still playing,” Denly recalled. “He was a fine player for Kent, very elegant at the crease, and played internationals himself. There were a number of Kent batters I looked up to and he was definitely one of them.
“He was always willing to help me as a young kid coming through. I remember one time he gave me throw-downs for 30 minutes. A very caring man – and an even better man for selecting me again!”
But there is no suggestion of impropriety: Denly heard nothing from the selectors about a recall until the day the squad was announced.
Promising as he was, Denly’s career for England never got beyond five T20 internationals and nine ODIs.
His first two T20 innings were first-ballers; he made some decent ODI starts, but no big innings to seal his place. Above all, he was prone to beating himself up after a failure. That appears to afflict batsmen who have been to state schools, like Denly or Mark Stoneman, say, more than those who have attended public schools.
“Of course you want to go into the international arena and impress your colleagues and team-mates and everyone else in the squad, so in that sense I probably put a bit too much pressure on myself before I even got started,” Denly said.
“I think I probably thought too much about failure. If I had a bad net, I’d let that probably get to me a little bit too much. If I didn’t score the runs out in the middle … I didn’t switch off too much from thinking about that, whereas now failure’s part of the game. There’s always one with your name on, but keep improving and always look on the positive side.
“I moved to Middlesex [in 2011] and it was all about trying to get back into the England fold,” Denly said.
“They played Division One, I felt I needed a fresh start. I went there with loads of ambitions but probably put too much pressure on myself on and off the field.”
He returned to Kent for the 2015 season to enjoy his cricket.
In his first England incarnation Denly bowled one over – such was the discouragement in those days for anyone English trying to bowl leg-spin.
“I have never worked with a coach a great deal, it’s something that was self-taught. I just bowled a lot of overs in the nets. There’s no great story to it, I started off as a medium-pacer, bowled a few leggies, they came out all right and it went from there.
“It’s like my batting, I don’t like to over-complicate things. It’s about feel and I like to work things out for myself. I seem to be able to land a leg-spinner quite well, which is a tough trade to do.”
So now he has the confidence not only of a mature player who has done stints in the Big Bash and Pakistan Super League, but also of an allrounder. “I suppose different players work out their games at different times of their career and I certainly feel much better equipped and have a much better understanding, not just technically but of the pressures that come with it and dealing with that on and off the field, not beating myself up too much.
“I was quite worried when I was younger about what people thought of me and how I looked, and I think the belief wasn’t quite there.
“Now I’m at ease with my game. Of course there’s always room for improvement, but there’s certainly that belief there and I really can’t wait to get going.
“In terms of where I see myself batting, to bat one, two or three would be amazing and I would love the chance to bat in one of those positions.”
Some would say that James Vince is better qualified to open against what is likely to be a four-man Sri Lanka spin attack, as he averages 58 against spin in Tests, or Liam Livingstone, who scored two centuries in one A Test in Sri Lanka last year. But Denly has surely earned some kind of England recall.
‘My leg-spin bowling is something that is self-taught. I have never worked with a coach a great deal’