Harry Brook

A former England U19s captain, Harry Brook announced himself as a player with a bright future with a remarkable T20 Blast season in 2020, averaging 55 and striking at 163 in the group stages despite batting in the middle order.

Brook had flickered in Yorkshire colours over the first couple of years of his professional summer, most notably when scoring a maiden first-class hundred at Chelmsford in 2018, as the visitors recovered from being bowled out for 50 in their first innings to inflict defeat on reigning champions Essex. He recorded a List A hundred at the start of Yorkshire's 2019 Royal London Cup campaign, and showed signs of greater consistency the following summer when he averaged 43.00 in the Bob Willis Trophy.

But his form in the Blast - first as a finisher in 2020, then shifting up to No. 4 in 2021 - was enough for him to be touted as a future England player, and an innings of 62 from 31 balls in the Northern Superchargers' first Hundred game led Ben Stokes to echo that sentiment. He is particularly strong against seamers, hitting down the ground, or over midwicket and the covers, and has become innovative too, reverse-lapping and scooping in the death overs.

Brook, an orderly young batsman, won 1st XI recognition midway through 2017 courtesy of an impressive run of scores in the second team, the highlight of which was a matchwinning century in a one-day final against Middlesex at Headingley. A product of the Burley-in-Wharfedale club, and Sedburgh School, Brook had already toured India with England Under-19s at that stage and he captained them later in the year in 50-over cricket in the return series against the Indians.

He led from the front, initially at least, at the 2018 U19 World Cup, where he finished as England's leading run-scorer. But he made a golden duck in the quarter-final defeat to Australia and was then dropped for their final game, a seventh-place play-off against New Zealand, for disciplinary reasons.
ESPNcricinfo staff