Flying beneath the radar, Will Beer is Sussex's all-time leading T20 wicket-taker

NICK FRIEND: The leg-spinner is one of two survivors - along with Luke Wright - from the Sussex side that won the Blast in 2009. Since then, he has been an integral part of their limited-over cricket, even if he has never become a red-ball regular

When Sussex lined up for their T20 Blast quarter-final victory over Yorkshire, 10 of the side had taken part in The Hundred at one point or another.

The odd man out was Will Beer. And perhaps that was somehow cruelly appropriate: a 32-year-old constant of Hove for more than a decade, who has operated for most of that time beneath the radar and among bigger names, but with enough success to be the county’s leading T20 wicket-taker.

Alongside Luke Wright, Beer is the last remaining survivor of the Sussex team that won the tournament in 2009 – it makes him feel old, even more so in the midst of the club’s shift in red-ball cricket to a fierce emphasis on youth: he used to coach 17-year-old Archie Lenham through the winters in his early teens, now they are teammates. James Kirtley, who took three wickets in that final 12 summers ago, is the head coach.

This has been a golden era for T20 cricket on the south coast: Tymal Mills in England’s World Cup squad; George Garton off to the Indian Premier League; Ravi Bopara and David Wiese back after Caribbean Premier League exploits; Rashid Khan – unavailable on Saturday – the greatest T20 bowler of all time and committed to Hove as his Blast home; Wright as the competition’s all-time highest run-scorer; Phil Salt impressing on ODI debut earlier this summer; Chris Jordan long-established as Eoin Morgan’s go-to man. The team selected for the quarter-final held 1,997 T20 appearances between them.

This was the fourth year in succession that the Sharks qualified for the knockout phase and the second time in that period that they have reached Edgbaston. Yet somehow, this generation still hasn’t won it.

But with Salt and Jordan both departing at the end of the season – for Lancashire and Surrey respectively – this weekend might just have more riding on it than in the past.

“It’s not the last dance,” Beer tells The Cricketer. “But it is the last time this team is going to play together. I think there is that determination and steeliness in the group to make sure that we put in our best performance, even if we lose, but just so we can walk away with our heads held high.

“There is so much quality in the side that I guess you do feel pressure as a unit to get to quarter-finals and Finals Day, and it is something that probably has eaten us up a little bit – the fact that we haven’t gone on and won it when there has been so much talk about Sussex’s side. At the same time, you’re only the best side on paper if you turn up and lift the trophy, and we haven’t managed to do that.”

^{Will Beer is one of two survivors in Sussex's squad from the team that won the T20 Blast in 2009}

Despite all four semi-finalists coming from the south group, Sussex were washed out against Somerset and in one of their games against Kent, while the other saw them beat a much-changed side that had been decimated by Covid isolations. It was only Hampshire – on the other side of the draw – whom Sussex met twice in the group stage, with a win apiece.

“It would be great for us to come away with a trophy this time,” says Beer. “I think the club needs it. With the team being broken up a bit, I think it would be a fitting way to end.”

Even more so with results being as they have been in the longer formats. There is a long-term strategy in place – backing a young group to be competing for honours in a few years’ time – but there is frustration among some fans, who not long ago were used to an annual title charge. This year, they have seen just three wins in 22 County Championship and Royal London Cup matches.

For Beer, though, this has been a welcome campaign; to such a degree has he become part of the furniture in Sussex’s white-ball work that it might have come as a surprise to see him play only a minor role in the last few seasons.

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This is the first time since 2016 that he has played in more than nine Blast matches; last year, he featured in the quarter-final against Lancashire but didn’t bowl. The arrival of Danny Briggs in the same year – and then the signing of Rashid in 2018 – meant that opportunities have been at a premium.

Beer’s appearances tended to be restricted to turning surfaces where Sussex opted for a third spinner or once the Afghanistan star had moved on to his next assignment.

“I think I possibly went under the radar because I hadn’t played as much in recent years,” he says, reflecting on the lack of interest in his signature when the draft for The Hundred came around.

The departure of Briggs, however – one of several senior faces to have moved on from Hove in recent times – has reopened the door. Beer has nine wickets at 28.44 apiece this year, with an economy rate comfortably below eight runs per over. And with Rashid on IPL duty, he is the senior spinner; no one has bowled more overs for Sussex this season.

^{Beer went through a phase playing red-ball cricket as a top-order batsman}

This return to prominence has come at an opportune moment, with the small matter of a contract that expires at the end of the summer.

“There have been talks of stuff, but I haven’t been offered one yet,” he explains. “Hopefully, putting in a good performance on Finals Day will secure something.” Three weeks on from the birth of his first child – “a bit of a shock to the system, but we’re getting into the swing of things” – he could be forgiven for feeling a sense of trepidation at the hanging uncertainty.

“To be honest, I haven’t,” he says. “I still think I’m good enough to be playing at this level, I still feel like I’ve got a few years left in me. I love going into work every day. It’s something that I want to keep doing – I’ve still got that drive to be as good a player as I can and to keep being a professional cricketer. I want to do that with Sussex. With a new-born at home and a mortgage to pay, there is a slight worry, I guess, of what’s going to happen. But I’m not thinking like that.”

There is something quite fascinating about the direction of travel through Beer’s career: he didn’t set out to be considered a white-ball specialist.

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“I was brought up to be a leg-spinner who spun the ball and took wickets in four-day cricket,” he reflects, “and I did that in second-team cricket when I was younger to push myself in the first team.”

Indeed, in 2009 the market didn’t yet exist for a T20-focused wrist-spinner, although in the Blast final that year he came up against Max Waller, another whose cricketing existence has followed a similar path. Rather, 12 months earlier on Beer’s debut for England Under-19s in a Test against New Zealand, he took six wickets in the second innings of an emphatic victory.

He doesn’t like the word but accepts that “possibly, I have been pigeonholed with white-ball cricket” as time has passed. Before a solitary County Championship outing this season, his previous stint in the four-day game came during an experiment as a top-order batsman. In 28 games, he has taken 43 first-class wickets and made four half-centuries.

“It’s something where I do look back at my career and wish I had been given more opportunity in red-ball cricket,” he admits. “Still to this day, I think I’m a good red-ball cricketer and could do well, given a run in the side.”

^{No one has taken more T20 Blast wickets than Beer's 103, heading into Finals Day}

In a sense, though, he has been hamstrung by Sussex’s resources in that department: he made his County Championship debut in the same month that Mushtaq Ahmed played the last match of his career, while Saqlain Mushtaq had represented the county in 2007 and Monty Panesar would arrive in 2010, before Briggs came on board having not long previously been on England’s radar.

He recalls his first-class bow against Nottinghamshire: “Chris Adams was a fantastic captain, unbelievable leader and incredibly inspirational. But with the expectation of following on from Mushy, I bowled my first over with slip, short leg, silly point, drive man and no sweeper out as an 18-year-old leg-spinner playing his first first-class game. I got smacked everywhere (he bowled 11 wicketless overs for 63). Then, I didn’t feature too much; Ollie Rayner played as the No.1 spinner.

“The expectation was: you’re a leg-spinner, do what Mushy did. And there was no way that I was ever going to do that. The way that the side was set up, we invariably played three seamers and a spinner, and the spinner – especially when Monty came – was there to do a holding role so the seamers could rotate. The nature of a young leg-spinner is that it’s not easy to do.”

At the same time, however, Beer had begun life in Sussex’s white-ball side, featuring prominently in a remarkable year that saw the club win the Pro40, as well as the T20 Blast – qualifying for the Champions League as a result – “a great concept, it is a shame that something like that doesn’t exist anymore” – while also losing the Friends Provident Trophy final at Lord’s. Indeed, he has never bowled as many balls in a single List A summer than in 2009.

And so, rather than pinpointing a particular moment at which his career narrowed in on this route – a journey now far more common than a decade ago – he instead traces it back to organic circumstance and a perfect storm.

“It’s just the nature of the beast,” he adds. “At the time, white-ball cricket was the avenue into the Sussex side, so it seemed silly to take my focus away from that. I guess I just fell into it. Luke Wells, on the opposite side of the spectrum, was pigeonholed as a red-ball player, but he’s now gone to Lancashire and has played a bit of white-ball and has done quite nicely in all formats. It’s just one of those things; you take the opportunity you’re given.

“They were a lot of high-profile red-ball spinners to be in and around, and I found it difficult to get in the side for red-ball cricket, so I had to make myself as good a white-ball player as I could – keep my contract, keep my place in the team, keep my job.”

^{Archie Lenham has been hugely impressive since arriving on the scene in a similarly dominant white-ball side to the team that Beer first entered}

Not that Beer means any of that as a negative nor bears any resentment; he is recognised these days as one of the premier domestic leg-spinners on the circuit, not least for his powers of longevity and malleability. “A single is a win now, whereas in 2009 you didn’t want to give a single away because the scores were so much lower,” he says of the skills he has developed to keep up with an ever-changing game. “You develop the ability to be more defensive and to be able to bowl more sliders at the stumps to keep batters hitting down the ground rather than slogging you across the line or whatever.”

He compares his arrival on the scene with Lenham’s experience this year, playing in a white-ball team packed with experienced senior pros. “I was thrown in with these guys who’ve all played international cricket; we had James Kirtley and Yasir Arafat bowling the death overs; Murray Goodwin was one of our mainstays with Dwayne Smith as our overseas; Wrighty and Michael Yardy; Matt Prior dipped in and out.

“There were so many high-profile players, I guess I was almost quite similar to Archie now. I was young, inexperienced, taking it all in game by game. You don’t really think too much at that age; you’re just delighted to be playing first-team cricket, and it just happened to be a successful side.”

Will Smeed is taking it all in his stride

As for fellow leg-spinner Lenham, Beer adds: “He’s obviously a really, really talented cricketer. He’s actually a really good batter as well – he’s a genuine allrounder in his own right, if not in his own age-group probably more of a batter than a bowler. But in men’s cricket, it’s just that he bowls at such a good pace – he’s almost as quick as Rash when he gets it right, which is amazing for someone so small and wiry.

“The main thing is his temperament. He’s just taken to it like a duck to water. Everything that’s thrown at him – he bowled well on debut at Bristol, then we played the next night on TV against Hampshire and he took three wickets.

“He hasn’t been fazed by the big occasion: whether that’s his debut, the cameras, bowling at some of the big names, bowling important overs. He just takes it all in his stride, he’s so level-headed, he’s such a nice kid, he always wants to learn. He’s just young and has that keenness of a young player; but he’s been thrown in the deep end and has handled it so well. The sky is the limit, he’s such a great talent.

“His skill and delivery are really good, but his mentality and how he handles pressure are going to really stand him in good stead.”

^{Rashid Khan has made Hove his Blast home in recent years}

Having Rashid onboard has certainly helped in that regard. Lenham attached himself to the Afghan great during his short stint at Hove this summer, while they would speak regularly as a trio during practice. Beer might have 10 years on him but knows “you’d be a fool not to try to get inside his mind”.

Refreshingly, though, the questions come from Rashid as well, which speaks to the esteem in which Beer is held. “I’ll ask Rash things about grips to try to get more pace on the ball,” he explains, “and he’ll be asking what he can do to bowl a bit slower or get a bit more spin or shape.

“None of us are the finished article, not even Rash. We’re always trying to get better.”

And as Beer goes in search of a second title, that seems a fitting message from Sussex’s leading T20 wicket-taker, still with plenty to give to the cause, even if he’s flying beneath the radar.