‘I can’t sit on the bench’: Sam Billings targets regular England role

Sam Billings knows exactly when he was last at home, though the memory is increasingly distant. It was 20 September 2021, two days after he captained Kent to victory in the Vitality Blast. “After that I went Indian Premier League, World Cup, holiday in the Maldives for a week where I got engaged to my other half, Sarah – I haven’t seen her since – and then Big Bash, then Test match, then here.”

These have been four whirlwind months, culminating most recently in a nine-hour, 820km drive from his BBL assignment on Australia’s Gold Coast to join England’s Ashes squad in Tasmania for his Test debut, followed a few days later by a marathon journey to join the Twenty20 side in Barbados via stop-offs in Sydney, Los Angeles and Miami. “I’ve tried to work out how long the journey took about four times,” he says. “The amazing thing was I took off at 11am on the 18th and I landed in LA at 8am the same day. I’d been on a plane for 15 hours. I don’t know what day it is. It’s just great to be here.”

What is particularly remarkable, given how much time he spends on international commitments, is how little international cricket Billings has played. England’s shambolic defeat to West Indies in the first of five T20s on Saturday night was the 30-year-old’s 60th international appearance in all formats, spread across – excluding one-off matches – 30 different series and nearly seven years. He has constantly been asked to score runs without ever being given one.

“Being the age I am now, I’ve got a really good idea of where my game’s at, and what I need to do to be ready,” he says. “The franchise world, I know it’s spoken about really badly by some people but actually it teaches you as a player to be self-sufficient. You work out pretty