Tom Banton

Mercifully, that had changed by the time he reached his mid-20s. Banton had never cracked red-ball cricket while miscast as an opener but worked hard on his fundamentals with Shane Burger at Somerset and Hashim Amla at MI Cape Town, and became a County Championship regular in the middle order. It appeared to help his short-form game too: he was a standout performer in the Blast as Somerset reached back-to-back finals, winning in 2023, and was the second-highest run-scorer in the 2025 ILT20. An England return followed as the spare batter in their doomed Champions Trophy campaign, and Brendon McCullum attempted to convert him into a finisher ahead of the 2026 T20 World Cup.

Banton comes from a cricketing family: his father Colin briefly broke into Nottinghamshire's first team in the 1990s, and his younger brother Jacques was briefly on Worcestershire's books. Tom was initially part of Warwickshire's academy before moving south to finish his schooling at King's College, Taunton, once citing "the whole Jos Buttler thing" as a reason for his move. He was an England Under-19s regular, playing under Harry Brook at the World Cup in 2018 and later captaining the side himself, but 2019 proved to be his real breakthrough.

He scored 454 runs in Somerset's victorious One-Day Cup campaign, including scores of 112, 59 and 69 in the three knockout games, then cracked 549 more in the T20 Blast. His televised, 52-ball 100 against Kent was the innings of the tournament and a predictable England call-up followed. A tall, powerful player, Banton's most eye-catching shots were his hockey-inspired reverse-slaps and scoops when he first broke through, but he has become more classical as his career has progressed. His first taste of international cricket came from 2019 to 2020, and he was briefly recalled for an off-Broadway West Indies tour in early 2022 before a three-year hiatus.