Underrated but undeterred: The all-round talents of Ryan Higgins, Gloucestershire's kingpin

NICK FRIEND: Those who played with Higgins even in his teens recall a top-order batsman who rarely bowled. Now he takes the new ball, while carving out a niche in Gloucestershire's engine room as a counter-attacking run machine

On another occasion, Ryan Higgins might well have been the story of the season.

Fifty wickets during Gloucestershire’s County Championship promotion-winning campaign were accompanied by 958 runs – the leading allrounder in the domestic game.

His reward was a place on the PCA Players’ Player of the Year shortlist – a fine accolade in any case, let alone in this unprecedented year. The big one, the major individual prize, the greatest nod of approval from those around you.

It placed him alongside Simon Harmer, Dom Sibley and Ben Stokes: one quarter of a surreal quartet – the least heralded of a group that spent much of this summer up in lights.

“It was quite special just to be listed up there with those guys,” Higgins laughs. Stokes won, of course. “It would have been embarrassing if he hadn’t,” he adds. “It was a foregone conclusion.”

In the context of this remarkable 2019, he is right: it was and it would have been. Yet, that is not to take away either from Higgins or, indeed, Gloucestershire; a cricketer and a club thriving in each other’s company.

As well as red-ball success, Richard Dawson’s side fell at the quarter-final stage of the T20 Blast, a single performance away from Edgbaston.

At a county without star names, there is instead a reliance on a collective spirit; across Division Two, only Leicestershire’s squad featured fewer international caps.

Captain Chris Dent passed 900 first-class runs for a fifth successive season, while Higgins describes David Payne and Benny Howell as two of “the best white-ball players in the country”.

It is Higgins, though, whose record is most fascinating. If Stokes has enjoyed a peerless summer, then the Gloucestershire man may be the county game’s closest equivalent – not in the physical manner of his runs or wickets, but in an omnipresence and the scope of his impact.

“What he has done for cricket this year has been absolutely extraordinary,” he gushes of Stokes.

“He’s a lot of people’s hero – even in county cricket. He’s the best allrounder in the world and someone who I look up to.”

Those who played with Higgins even in his teens recall a top-order batsman who rarely bowled. Now, however, he takes the new ball, shaping it at a self-admittedly gentle pace, while carving out a niche in the engine room of Gloucestershire’s middle order as a counter-attacking run machine.

None of his teammates could touch his Championship average of 59.87; only Dent surpassed his 958 runs; nobody came close to his strike-rate of 76.64; no one took more wickets, got through more overs or bowled more maidens; only Ethan Bamber, who played two games while on loan, proved more economical.

They are the numbers of a fine season – and a Hundred deal with Welsh Fire represents acknowledgement of sorts. Yet, his unusual skillset makes him an unfashionable player in the modern era; he has mastered – for a man of his age – an unlikely art.

“The type of cricketer I am maybe leads me to go under the radar a bit more,” he tells The Cricketer. “I don’t bowl too quickly; I suppose I don’t look the prettiest when I bat.

“The way I play doesn’t necessarily mean I stand out, if that makes sense. I don’t know if I feel that individually, but I think that probably has been the way over the summer.

“I still enjoy it and I like playing the way I play but I am always looking to improve as well. There is obviously something missing there in terms of getting to the next level which, when people watch me play cricket, they obviously don’t see.”

^{Ryan Higgins was shortlisted for the PCA Players' Player of the Year award}

His seamers remain a relatively recent personal discovery – the consequence of a desire to add value to his white-ball game as a multi-dimensional, multi-functional allrounder. In the process, he has become one of the domestic T20 circuit's most frugal death-bowling options.

Even with his short build, he is determined to maximise any speed he can add; as England search for pace and top-order batters, he knows he must evolve. Batting higher up, where he started his career and spent his age-group days, remains the objective.

“I’ve got England ambitions,” Higgins states. After the year he has had, of course, why wouldn’t he? “I’m not 100 per cent sure how that looks at the moment.

“Initially, I never really thought about my bowling as something that would get me into the red-ball side. I thought eventually I’d be a batter there – that never happened. I actually made my debut there as an allrounder.

“I don’t put a ceiling to what I can do. I’m not as quick as some of the guys, so that works to my disadvantage in terms of a ceiling of where to play, but I’ve also looked at guys like Tim Murtagh who have played Test cricket pretty late but have done quite well in English conditions and done well against England.

“I don’t put a ceiling on that. I’m not sure how people look at it; I’m pretty sure the top teams in world cricket do look at pace, which is something I’ll have to work on.

“With the bat, I think I’ve got more in the tank. Because of my bowling, I’ve probably ended up batting a bit lower than I would have liked, which is something now that I need to try to rectify and make sure I’m looking to try and get up the order and score even more runs from up there.”

That was where his professional cricketing existence began: an opener in second-team cricket at Middlesex, a member of England Under-19s’ top order, a middle-order dasher when he made his Middlesex bow in T20 cricket. It was only when he found himself part of a much-changed side at Lord’s the following year that his role changed.

It is why, he explains, none of his progress – with the bat, at least – surprises him. To a degree, it frustrates him that it has taken until now for this year to happen.

“In a funny way, being signed at 18, I believed at 18 or 19 I was ready to play as a batter – and in some senses, I probably was,” he reflects.

“In a weird way, I feel like it has taken so long – it has taken six years. It shows how tough cricket is and how hard you have to work to actually get somewhere.

“With the ball, I probably am amazed at how well I’ve done, but then again I did work hard for that to happen. With the bat, it’s taken a lot longer than I thought it would.”

Having been born and raised in Zimbabwe for his first 13 years – a place and a time of his life, he promises, he will “never forget”, he played at age-group level for Berkshire prior to joining up with Middlesex.

“I look at England as my home now,” he says, “but I still love Zimbabwe – it has a special place in my heart.”

^{Higgins made 958 County Championship runs and took 50 wickets this season}

He recalls the bat he was given by his grandfather as a four-year-old – and he would play every day in the net built for him by his dad in the garden.

“I went to boarding school there and had a really supportive coach who helped me,” Higgins adds.

“It’s quite incredible looking back on it now. He would throw balls at me for an hour every day without fail – even as a 10-year-old.”

As he recounts that particular fortune a decade on, there is a sense of wonder in his voice at that opportunity. It was the start of something, the initial steps that paved the way for what followed.

It is easier for Higgins to look back now – as a bona fide star of the domestic game – to his teenage years, when he was impressionable, perhaps naïve, desperate to play.

“It was tough,” he recalls of his Middlesex days, “certainly when I had my first year and did really well. And then in my second year I only played something like two games.

“I found that really hard to adjust to. I understood it because international cricketers came back, but I also felt like I was performing really well. I do think that time was just something I needed to get through.

“It was just going to be one of my little challenges to get through on my journey which, at the time, you definitely can’t see. You can never see that light, can you? But I’m happy it happened to me – it made me into a tougher cricketer.

“I don’t think as a young player many people take on the challenges. I don’t feel that, at that point, I took on the challenge of: ‘Right, how can I get better as a batsman to get into that team?’

“I remember getting into the winter of 2016 and saying: ‘I’m never ever going to take a backseat again.’ I just decided then that I wanted more than what I had given. I started giving more – and the more I gave, the more I started to get back.”

It is hard not to deeply admire what Higgins has achieved since arriving at Gloucestershire. Once upon a time a plucky, grinding kind of cricketer, he has developed himself into so much more. That he ended this red-ball season 42 runs shy of pulling off the 1,000-run-50-wicket double is some effort.

It must be difficult to believe in destiny as an athlete. Professional sport is an unforgiving, merciless business. But after a 28-ball 68 for Middlesex against Gloucestershire at Cheltenham in the summer of 2017, the side he had thrashed about on that afternoon soon came calling.

His move at the end of that season to Bristol was a disappointment for Middlesex, who held him in high regard. For many members in London, he represents the one who got away. Yet, Higgins harbours no resentment towards his first county, though there is an equal absence of regret in his eyes.

“I thought it was a tough decision,” he explains. “But the toughest decision was leaving all my mates who I played with day-in-day-out – my friendship group, who are still friends now. Those are the things I was more nervous about.

“From a cricket point of view, I really wanted to believe that I was going to be backed as a four-day cricketer there, but I don’t think I ever was. I remember scoring that many runs in the second team and not getting a chance. That may have changed but it would have taken another three or four years.

“It was an easy decision because I’d watched so many guys do it and just stay but not get anywhere. And then you watch someone like Adam Rossington take the plunge and their careers flourish straight away.”

Rossington has led Northamptonshire to their own improbable promotion, taking over the reins with his side propping up Division Two midway through June; and the two teams toasted their successes together in one of the images of the summer as the final day of their red-ball season was washed out. He, like Higgins, has found his home away from home.

^{Along with David Payne and Benny Howell, Higgins was picked up in The Hundred draft}

There is a fairly legitimate claim to be made that Higgins is the very best domestic signing secured by a county side in recent years. In two campaigns at the club, he has taken 98 red-ball wickets at 21.06 – his secondary skill. He is a shining example of perseverance and of the value of genuine investment and patience in youth.

It has helped, he says, that so many at Bristol are familiar faces. When he first joined, he was followed by Chris Rogers, the former Australia batsman and a Middlesex teammate, in a coaching capacity.

Dawson, meanwhile, had worked with him internationally at under-19 level; while he had also played under Julian Wood at school. “It all just made sense,” stresses the 24-year-old.

In short, it is a move that has worked out – not all of them do. He will be joined next season by George Scott, another to follow his path from Middlesex – a cricketer with a very similar game to Higgins as a middle-order batsman and canny medium-pacer, another who will benefit from regular cricket.

“The biggest thing I’ve got from playing for Gloucestershire is just the drive and determination from a few young guys, but also a few older guys, all with the same ambition to play at the next level,” he adds.

“They might not outwardly say it – there are quite a few guys who are very humble and don’t necessarily push their case, but I know for a fact that there are guys who want to play for England.

“They are putting their name in a place by performances, as opposed to just talking about it. It has just been a case in the last few years of guys not getting that chance to go to the next level.

“I don’t think that has stopped anyone’s ambitions and I think that’s why we’ve had a very good year. People are individually ambitious but they never let that in front of the team.”

Howell and Payne are just two who have impressed relentlessly over time – especially in white-ball cricket, but without further honours.

Howell’s credentials have been aired with greater volume; his array of slower deliveries and variations saw him picked up for £75,000 in the Hundred draft, while Payne was also signed by Welsh Fire – one round before Higgins, but in the same £40,000 price bracket.

Higgins and Payne watched together on a sofa awaiting their fate, armed with a takeaway to calm any lingering nerves. “We were basically just keeping each other calm,” he chuckles.

“Someone like Payney, what he’s done in white-ball cricket is quite extraordinary,” Higgins reflects. “His record is very good; I would be shocked if it wasn’t one of the best in the country.”

As it happens, nobody has taken more Blast wickets in the powerplay than the left-armer in the last three years.

“Benny must be one of the unluckiest guys going, not to have played T20 cricket internationally,” he says. “He’s the kind of guy you could see playing all around the world. These are things that come to those who wait, but they are very good white-ball players.”

As is the Gloucestershire way, he is chuffed for his two teammates; the trio were the county’s only players to emerge successful from the draft.

It is tough on several members of a close-knit squad – Miles Hammond, for one, could well have forced his way into the reckoning.

“When I saw the list of players who hadn’t been picked up, I realised I was just privileged to be a part of it,” Higgins admits.

“It’s really tough on guys who’ve done well and didn’t get in. I sent a few messages and a few messages were sent to me from guys who didn’t get picked up. Those guys are really happy for all of us.

“Their mindset was still that if they have a good T20 Blast, there’s that wildcard spot. Also, it’s not the only year this is going to happen. So yes, there’s an advantage to being drafted in the first year. Realistically though, one year you might be in it, the next year you might not.”

If 2020 is anything like 2019, however, Higgins will have few problems.