‘He’s been a part of the Somerset DNA for years’

Amid the crash and bash of The Ashes and Somerset County Cricket Club’s stunning T20 Vitality Blast success, there has been a teenage wicketkeeper who has played his way to the top of the leading run scorers chart in the Championship.

James Rew is still only 19 but has already amassed nearly 1,000 runs in 2023 and was an ever-present in England’s run to the Under-19’s World Cup Final before being selected by the England Lions.

A score of 221 against Hampshire meant that Rew equalled the number of Championship centuries by a teenager and Somerset CCC’s Director of Cricket, Andy Hurry, has told Somerset’s Alive! that he has exceeded the high hopes the club had for him.

Andy said: “[Rew’s] a player that we identified with real high potential at a very young age and the reality is that he has surprised us in the consistency he has demonstrated in first class cricket.

“He has scored a number of hundreds this year after scoring his first class maiden hundred last year and he’s gone from strength to strength and it’s a great story.”

The success of Rew, who was spotted while a pupil at King’s College in Taunton, is something that has been celebrated across the county, according to Hurry, who said: “I’ve talked before about the family aspect of Somerset County Cricket Club and the connectivity it has with the region and it seems like everybody has connected with James Rew.”

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Describing Rew’s fledgling career and his journey to being a professional cricketer, Andy continued: “He came through a local club, he played county age group cricket and then second team cricket and everyone has followed this journey and it inspires the next generation of aspirational cricketers across the womens, mens, boys and girls game.

“It is really exciting as the future looks really bright and optimistic for Somerset and the English game as within this region we are developing a high  potential players at a really young age.”

Hurry hailed the local game in Somerset as he said that this brings plenty of passion to the sport in the region.

He added: “There’s a lot of passion connected to cricket, whether that’s village cricket, club cricket, professional cricket, the game brings people together and we can all think of examples where someone is involved and that gives us connectivity to the professional game and that’s what we love about it.”

Hurry was pleased with the route that Rew had taken as it showed that the development of young cricketers in the county is going from strength to strength.

Hurry told Somerset’s Alive!: “It has been part of the Somerset DNA for a number of years now is that we have a real focus on developing local talent, whether that is from Somerset of from the surrounding counties of Devon, Dorset and Cornwall because that is the connection.

“We want as much of a core team from those who have come through the system in the South West because then people can connect to it.”