The Australia Ashes 2023 stars who grew up in English club cricket

The ICC’s latest rankings list Marnus Labuschagne, Steve Smith and Travis Head as one, two and three in the world’s batting pecking order.

Now, these Aussies are as fair dinkum as they come but, whisper it quietly, all three of them owe much to their time at a very English finishing school.

Sevenoaks, Sandwich and Ventnor are three quintessential examples of an idyllic England. And at various points in the careers of this top trio, they also served an entry into the English game.

Ventnor, on the south-east coast of the Isle of Wight, boasts one of the most picturesque grounds in the country. But it is one which couldn’t be further removed from Edgbaston, where Head will look to continue his remarkable recent Test record the first Ashes Test.

With the sea lapping at long-off, and a crab pasty shack nestled on the beach front, Steephill is a ground like no other.

And it didn’t take the club too long to realise they had a tasty prospect when the 19-year-old Head stepped off the Red Funnel ferry in 2013.

“I remember him coming out to bat for the first time and he hit a full toss a spinner over mid-wicket after maybe three or four balls,” says former teammate Robert Snell. “This ball just went like a tracer bullet and it went miles.

“He was just a phenomenal cricketer but a great guy too. He was very confident in his own ability, that was clear, but he had a down to earth quality to him.

“He was fun to be around – and definitely the best overseas player we’ve ever had.

“We had to play our league games at Newclose [the home of Isle of Wight cricket] that season, but he did play at Steephill. The only difference was that instead of smashing balls into the Solent, he was hitting them into a field of alpacas instead.”

Head scored 733 league runs for Ventnor that season and averaged 61. Speaking to i before the 2019 series, he revealed the impact that the stint had on his career.

“I was living in Southampton at the time but the Ventnor boys looked after me. Just living away from home and having to do stuff on your own for the first time is a big thing when you’re a young guy.

“You know when you’re an overseas players that there are expectations placed on you – you have to score runs and you have to win games of cricket for your side.”

Steve Smith is no stranger to expectation. As another Ashes series begins, he’ll know that a repeat of his 2019 heroics will take the Aussies one step closer to retaining the urn.

Back in 2007, though, the former Australia captain had more prosaic ambitions.

“He arrived at Sevenoaks from a Lancashire League club,” says Sevenoaks Vine chairman, Hugo Tudor. “He was homesick and had come to Kent to stay with a family friend and business partner of his father.

“We already had an overseas player at the time, so Steve started in the second XI. In his first game, Blackheath scored 367 off 50 overs, Steve then opened the batting and scored 185 not out. We won with five overs to spare. The original overseas player then politely stepped aside for the rest of the season. Funnily enough, he was probably seen as much as a leg-spinner as a batsman back then.”

When the club were initially contacted, Sevenoaks’ then chair of the management committee, Gavan Burden, was sent a clipping from the Sydney Morning Herald which had profiled the 17-year-old under the headline “It looks like we’ve found our next Shane Warne – only this one can bat too”.

Smith’s Test wicket tally stands at just 19 – only 689 short of the late Warne’s total. His batting has more than made up for that shortfall.

“We’re obviously hugely proud to have played a small part in his career,” says Tudor. “It’s a real badge of honour for the club.”

Sandwich, just over 60 miles east of Sevenoaks, is best known for its Open Championship golf course. This summer, though, members of a cricket club that boasts an England Ashes star in the form of Tammy Beaumont, will also keep more than one eye on the feats of Marnus Labuschagne.

The quirky Aussie played for the Kent Premier League club in 2014 and pretty much re-wrote the record book, scoring a league record 1,049 runs – 37 more than the previous mark set by Justin Langer during a stint with Dover in 1992.
Labuschagne’s insatiable appetite for runs is likely to be in evidence again this summer. In an interview with the BBC, he outlined the processes he put in place during that spell in the Garden of England.

“I’d go for an hour’s walk, sit on a bench and visualise my innings ball by ball – literally until I got a hundred,” he said.

“The first game for Sandwich, I got 127 in 24 overs. We played 55-over games. There was still more than half the overs left, and I got out.

“I thought if ‘I want to get a double hundred, I need to visualise it’. The next week I visualised the hundred, then getting to 200. I got 203 not out.”

England will be out to make sure life is no picnic for the ex-Sandwich star. But in the shires there’s huge pride at the role English cricket has played in the rise of the Fab Three.