The curious List A average of Ben Slater

JAMES COYNE: It is a good era to be opening the batting in one-day cricket, but Slater's record of five hundreds and nine fifties in 36 one-day matches is still some way above the norm

Which English batsman averages more than 55 in List A cricket, yet has never been picked in any England representative side – England, the Lions, or Under-19?

Ben Slater is hoping to change that fact as he continues his superb start to his Nottinghamshire career.

Slater, 27, a compact left-hander, moved across from Derbyshire to Notts late last season, and was in scintillating form for his new county in both red and white-ball cricket since his arrival, though injury forced him to miss the latter group stages of the Royal London One-Day Cup. Slater’s 58 could not quite tip the balance in the semi-final, as Notts were dumped out by Somerset.

It is a good era to be opening the batting in one-day cricket, but Slater’s record of five hundreds and nine fifties in 36 one-day matches is still some way above the norm. He is a bit unclear as to why he averages as much as 22 runs higher in List A cricket than first-class.

“I don’t know,” he told The Cricketer. “Ever since I got in the 50-over side [at Derbyshire] I had a good run in it. That helped. I got a hundred in my first game, and three that year, so I took confidence from that. I just roll with it.

“With red-ball it’s a bit different – if you have a few low scores you could be out of the side. Probably the white ball doesn’t do as much, but I got on a roll.

^{Ben Slater has been in excellent white-ball form for Nottinghamshire}

“Everyone keeps telling me there’s opportunities at the top of the order higher up [for England and the Lions] but for me it’s about trying to score as many runs as I can for Notts.”

Slater says his grounding at Derby stands him in good stead as he tries to succeed where several others have failed by making a success of the Notts opening berth in the Championship.

Trent Bridge has developed a dual identity: a ground where teams regularly rack up 400-plus in 50-over cricket – the lightning outfield and short boundary on the Bridgford Road side are factors – but one of the toughest places to open against the swinging and seaming red Dukes.

“You just know the Dukes ball is going to nibble around as an opener. I spent the first decade of my career at Derby on wickets there that did obscene amounts for a couple of years. So I’m used to that.”

He felt that the attention to detail at Notts, where head coach Peter Moores is possibly the most highly-regarded batting coach across all the counties, was his main motivation for making the move to the bigger club.

After his departure, Derbyshire invested heavily in new coaches, bringing back David Houghton as head of cricket; seven years ago it was Houghton who took Slater to play a season in Zimbabwean domestic cricket.

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Slater says: “It was obviously a tough decision to move counties. I’d been at Derby since the age of 10, growing up through the age-groups, so it was not a decision I took lightly. It took me most of the summer to come to that decision.

“But I think that deep down I always knew this was the move I needed to take if I was going to push myself and take my career as far as I hope to. Maybe [the absence of full-time coaches at Derby] was a factor. But when a county like Notts comes calling with the coaches that are here, like Peter Moores, it’s a no-brainer, really.

“I know Dave Houghton pretty well. He’s a great man and a good coach, so I hope they do well.”

While making the grade at Derbyshire, Slater played a lot for his hometown club Chesterfield, and spent three years in a successful Leeds/Bradford MCCU team while at university. He is part of the quarter of English first-class cricketers who came through the MCCU scheme.

Fast-forward to this year, and he put on an opening stand of 325 with Ben Duckett in Notts’ first-class opener against Cambridge MCCU at Fenner’s. In a dry start to the season, there were the kinds of stratospheric batting totals produced by counties which put the MCCU scheme again under the microscope (as discussed by George Dobell and Paul Edwards in May’s issue of The Cricketer magazine). 

The MCCU scheme is set for reform in 2020 when the ECB takes over funding it from MCC. The exact shape is as yet unclear, but there is more limited-overs cricket set to come in for the students.

Slater's first-class average is 22 lower than his List A equivalent

David Graveney, the ECB national performance manager who carried out a review into university cricket, told The Cricketer last year: “There is a wider trend to play more white-ball cricket. So fitting some T20 around exams might not be the worst idea in the world – good for a student’s headspace. It’s a bit tougher to fit in a three-day match. All the universities have different exam blocks, which makes it tricky to schedule. I hope we can achieve a balance between T20 and the three-day game.”

Slater feels he benefited from the opportunity to take three years out of Derbyshire to combine cricket on Weetwood Playing Fields with studying at Leeds Metropolitan University.

“When I signed my first summer contract at Derby, the coach at the start was happy for me to go there and get a degree. I think it meant he could pay me less money as well, so he was happy with that! But I came out the other side and I kicked on and we beat a few teams.

BEN SLATER: FIRST CLASS vs LIST A

First-class: 73 matches, 4,345 runs, average 33.42, 5 100s, 25 50s, HS 130

List A: 36 matches, 1,611 runs, average 55.55, 5 100s, 9 50s, HS 148*

“I was pretty unlucky, in a way – I got a hundred in my first game for Leeds/Bradford against a county [Warwickshire in 2010], but it wasn’t a first-class match. That hasn’t gone on my first-class stats. It would have made them a bit better!

“Luis Reece was there; Alex Blake; Ross Whiteley; Dan Hodgson, who spent a bit of time at Yorkshire; Joe Leach is Worcestershire captain now. And probably a couple more who missed out making it. We had a good side. And there were other top players who were at other MCCUs, like Sam Billings.”

Slater believes the MCCU scheme has to be retained in one form or another – it’s just a matter of how.

“I strongly recommend that there’s a place for it. It’s just whether they have to reinvent it a bit, and whether it’s first-class or not.”

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