Tom Banton and Prithvi Shaw both regressed after early success but there is time for cricket to be kind to them again

“I hated cricket, I didn’t really enjoy playing it, I just had to do it because it was a job.” Last week Tom Banton gave a revealing interview to Wisden’s Katya Witney about how he fell out of love with the game. Banton’s comments would have raised a knowing if rueful smile from every amateur cricketer across the land. Cricket has failure written through it. Anyone who has had a summer weekend ruined and the ensuing week blighted by a golden duck, a dropped catch or ignominious bowling spell will relate. So too, Banton continues, can his fellow professionals: “When you talk to everyone who’s played a lot of cricket for a long period of time, there are moments in your career where you fall out of love with it for a bit.”

Banton’s tale is one of immense talent that curdled as a result of burnout, a nascent career blighted by Covid quarantines, exorbitant expectations and the pernicious nature of social media. After a breakout season as a teenage scooping and sweeping sensation for Somerset in 2019, Banton was called up by England to play white-ball cricket at the end of the year. He didn’t set the world alight in his early international games but showed plenty of promise before the runs began to dry up and he was dropped after a series of low scores against Australia at the end of the 2020 summer.

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