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After a fluctuating year, Sam Curran<\/a> spoke to Wisden.com during his stint for Desert Vipers in the ILT20.<\/p>\n Sam Curran has been a professional cricketer for more than a decade. In that time, he\u2019s stacked up over 100 international caps, a T20 World Cup Player of the Tournament medal to go with the winner\u2019s trophy, and three County Championship titles which sit alongside the same number of Hundred wins. He also finished school during those years, received an MBE and two months ago he got engaged. All of that, and he still has more than two years of his 20s remaining.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ve been pretty non-stop since leaving school,\u201d Curran tells Wisden.com. \u201cWhen you\u2019re younger you just do everything that\u2019s being thrown at you. I\u2019m at an age now where I\u2019ve experienced a lot of highs and a lot of lows so when you bridge those two together you can understand your game quite well.\u201d<\/p>\n The last 12 months have been the most fluctuating of Curran\u2019s high and low career. He was dropped from England\u2019s white-ball squads at the start of the winter and, for the first time since his international debut, wasn\u2019t even on the sidelines of any of the three squads. He\u2019s starting 2026 on a high, however, having captained Desert Vipers to a win in the final of the ILT20, and finished the competition as its leading run-scorer. Curran played a starring role in both the Qualifier and final, whacking 38 off 12 balls as an innings finisher against MI Emirates, before hitting an unbeaten 74* in the final.<\/p>\n ALSO READ: How Sam Curran went from Player of the Tournament to the fringes in 18 months<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n Curran\u2019s career is a tricky one to piece together. He hasn\u2019t played a Test match since 2021 having burst onto the scene by winning player of the match in a memorable game at Edgbaston three years before. There was a sense that he was too ambiguous, not quite tall enough or quick enough to make it as a Test bowler, and not quite skilled enough with the bat to demand a place with that discipline. When Ben Stokes went down with injury against Sri Lanka in the summer of 2024, prime areas for a Curran recall, he was overlooked.<\/p>\n His white-ball international career is even trickier to pin down. The 2022 World Cup was the peak of his career so far<\/a>. He was the point of difference bowling at the death during England\u2019s trophy-winning campaign. But, less than 18 months later, he was once again pushed to the fringes, unable to replicate those highs outside of the specific conditions which had made them possible. Something had to change.<\/p>\n \u201cWe play a sport that\u2019s pretty simple in terms of runs and wickets,\u201d says Curran. \u201cSo I knew that I had to go and be consistent for the teams that I was playing in and I felt like I learned a lot about my game being out of the side. I worked on a few things and that was the message, to go away and score runs and take wickets. It was a nice simple message.\u201d<\/p>\n It wouldn\u2019t have been unreasonable for Curran to think his international career was on pause for some time after being left out of England\u2019s white ball squads at the beginning of this year. Brendon McCullum had just taken charge of the white-ball set-up to go along with his Test role. McCullum\u2019s preference for bowlers with more pace than Curran has been clear, and Curran hasn\u2019t played a Test under McCullum\u2019s regime. At the time, he stated publicly that he feared he no longer \u201cfit the mould\u201d of what England management was looking for.<\/p>\n ALSO READ: Sam Curran \u2013 I was ‘gutted’ about not being picked for Sri Lanka Tests after Stokes’ injury<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n Instead, Curran took the opportunity to reset and nail down a new role, one that would make him difficult for England not to pick. No longer viable as a frontline bowler, he set about reforming himself into a top five batter, with unique variations as a sixth bowler<\/a>.<\/p>\n A lot of that work happened on the franchise routes of the winter, which have been a stable part of Curran\u2019s life since he first burst to international attention. At a different phase in his life now, however, he looks at lucrative contracts for a few weeks work here and there in a different way.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen you\u2019re playing franchise cricket you meet so many different coaches,\u201d says Curran. \u201cBut thankfully my route of franchise cricket at the moment has been with coaches who know me which is also quite important, like going to set ups where you feel valued.\u201d<\/p>\n Playing for Desert Vipers in the ILT20 last year, Curran was in the top five run-scorers in the competition, scoring an unbeaten 62 in the final batting at No.5. He also captained the side in Lockie Ferguson\u2019s absence, his first step into a leadership role of a professional side. Appointment as Surrey\u2019s T20 captain followed a month later. As his boyhood club, The Oval is the core of Curran\u2019s story. Ahead of last summer, he joined up with teammates turned players Gareth Batty and Jade Dernbach to fine-tune the work he\u2019d started in the winter.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ve got a lot of close people around me who know me on and off the field,\u201d says Curran. \u201cSurrey has been a big part of that. They\u2019ve seen me on and off the field, when I\u2019m not playing too well I go back to the coaches there or I go to The Oval and hit a few balls. I go back to people that know me rather than, sometimes you get so many people who are involved. Slowing down is sometimes a good thing.\u201d<\/p>\n Sam Curran is having a season to remember in The Hundred \ud83d\udcaa#SamCurran<\/a> #Cricket<\/a> pic.twitter.com\/C4cuSlVtlY<\/a><\/p>\n \u2014 Wisden (@WisdenCricket) August 26, 2025<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n Having signed off the IPL with a 47-ball 88 before returning home, Curran started the season with four wickets and 147 in Surrey\u2019s Championship match against Essex. The next month, he hit his second first-class century, cashing in on a flat Oval track to score 108 off 117 balls. As part of a formidable Oval Invincibles lineup, he scored 238 runs from eight innings. No one in the competition scored as many runs at a higher strike-rate than him (176.29). In his most memorable knock at The Oval against Trent Rockets<\/a>, the Invincibles needed 102 off 40 balls when he came to the crease. After he scored seven from his first 12 deliveries, Curran hit 36 off his next seven. By the time he was out, the equation had been reduced to 37 off 14.<\/p>\n \u201cThat was one of those nights where things just clicked,\u201d said Curran. \u201cYou train for those moments, and that night me and Coxy [Jordan Cox] batted nicely.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s more like your movements feel good and you feel like you\u2019re seeing the ball really early, and when you\u2019re hitting the ball and it\u2019s travelling into the stands, it\u2019s a pretty good feeling when there\u2019s a lot of fans at The Oval.\u201d<\/p>\n For all that success of the summer built off a winter\u2019s hard work, Curran was still overlooked for England\u2019s white-ball squads in September. It was only after Ben Duckett took an extra week of rest that Curran was added to the T20I squad. For the winter series in New Zealand, however, Curran was back in the big time<\/a>, selected as part of a first-choice ODI squad and a T20 group only a few months away from a T20 World Cup. He scored an unbeaten 49* in Christchurch amid a rain-interrupted series.<\/p>\n The culmination of those efforts over the summer, is that Curran was named in England\u2019s provisional squad for the T20 World Cup in February. Given the crowded nature of England\u2019s T20 group, with the option to pack their top-order like they did against South Africa, and the option to select a spin-bowling allrounder like Will Jacks or Rehan Ahmed to fill Curran\u2019s role on subcontinental pitches, Curran has fought through a competitive field. The role Curran plays in this World Cup will likely not be as central as his starring role in 2022, but that is out of his hands. But, as he proved over the first half of this year, everything else very much is in his control.<\/p>\n \u201cI got thrown in when I was young,\u201d says Curran. \u201cSo you just play like you would in a school game to start with. I\u2019ve learned a lot since then and I\u2019m a very different player to who I was back then. When you\u2019re young you don\u2019t really think about the game too much because it\u2019s a dream to play for your country. Now you see a bigger picture to life on the field and off the field. I still feel like I\u2019ve got a long way to go.\u201d<\/p>\n Follow Wisden for all cricket updates, including <\/strong>live scores<\/a><\/strong>, match stats, <\/strong>quizzes<\/a><\/strong> and more. Stay up to date with the <\/strong>latest cricket news<\/a><\/strong>, player updates, team <\/strong>standings,<\/a><\/strong> match highlights, <\/strong>video analysis<\/a><\/strong> and <\/strong>live match odds<\/a><\/strong>.<\/p>\n \n