James Vince interview: ‘I feel like I can do better in Test cricket. I’ve had the taste of it. I know what it takes’

You know James Vince. At least, you think you do. He strides impassively out to the middle, plays a couple of dreamy cover drives, breezes regally to about 25, making Test match cricket look like the easiest game in the world. And then, with a crushing inevitability, he nicks off into the slip cordon before sauntering back up the steps with a glorious insouciance. You sigh, you curse, you throw something at the television. All the talent in the world, you think. None of the application.

It may come as something of a surprise, therefore, to learn that Vince doesn’t quite see it the same way. For one thing, he’s fiercely self-critical: forensic in his analysis of his own game, constantly striving for improvement, technical advice, a competitive edge. For another, he classifies himself as something of a pessimist: at least, where England is concerned. “I have more of a pessimistic look on things,” he admits at one point. “I plan for the worst, and then go from there.”

The upshot, in short, is that the Vince we glimpse from the outside – calm, cavalier, diffident – is very different from the one fighting his own personal battles on the inside.

We meet at Southampton’s Ageas Bowl, on the cusp of a season that Vince hopes will see him regain his England place, after twice being dropped in 2016 and 2018. The sun is out on the south coast, and for now the focus is on a new four-day campaign with Hampshire, a new role at the top of the order, the burden of captaining a side that hasn’t won the Championship for almost half a century. But with the Ashes looming on the horizon, and England’s top three in a state of flux, Vince knows he has a chance. He also knows, however, that it’s going to take a good deal of graft, and a little luck.

First things first, then: those off-side dismissals. Fifteen of them in total, out of just 22 Test innings. That’s more than two-thirds of his knocks ending in the arc between keeper and cover. And yet it’s his favourite scoring area, too. When you play the drive that well, how do you reel it in? How can you muzzle a shot that looks and feels that good?

Towards the end of last summer, Vince’s father forwarded him something he’d come across on the internet. It was an article on the Wisden website, a Cricviz analysis with the headline ‘Why James Vince Is The Unluckiest Batsman In The World’.

Vince has always been a voracious reader of his own press, and so he clicked with interest. The gist of the piece was that so far in his Test career, Vince has been out disproportionately often, given the shots he has played. In other words, balls that players would generally expect to play and miss once in a while, Vince has frequently nicked. It posited, further, that if Vince’s luck ever gets a chance to even itself out, then England could have some player on their hands.

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So, unfocused or just unfortunate? As Vince admits, it’s a bit of both. “I played six Tests last winter, got a couple of unlucky dismissals, a couple of good balls,” he says. “I didn’t necessarily have the time to claw it back. You start playing for your place a little bit. You have two or three low scores, and the nature of international cricket is there’s always guys wanting the spot you’re in. Unlucky? Well, if you nick it, you nick it.

“Every time I get out, I try and assess whether it was a poor decision, poor execution, whether the bowler got me out, whether I could have done anything differently. It’s not every time you got a great ball. Not every time it’s going to be your fault. Occasionally you’re going to make a bad decision. Everyone in the world does that.”

What he wants to put to bed, meanwhile, is the idea of him as a carefree, reckless batsman: one who almost finds it so easy they end up playing one shot too many. “I don’t watch myself a huge amount,” he explains. “But in my own head, it doesn’t feel as easy as what you’ve just said there. Not out in the middle. Even Brisbane [the first Ashes Test of 2017-18 when he made his highest score of 83] felt like hard work.

“Every now and again, you feel like your rhythm’s on, you can do pretty much anything. But those days are very rare. It always feels like a grind. There’s never an easy run.”

Like anyone who makes their living from the game in all three formats these days, Vince occasionally finds it hard to switch off. Eliza, his two-year-old daughter, helps in that respect. The golf course is another refuge. But when there’s hard work to be done, there’s no hiding place. So it was that after a gruelling winter of white-ball cricket – the new T10 League in Sharjah, a Big Bash stint with Sydney Sixers, a spell with the immaculately named Multan Sultans in the Pakistan Super League – he was straight back into the nets on his return, hitting balls by the hundred in preparation for his new role at the top of the order.

It’s a bold move, and a statement of intent. Opening against the new ball in England in April is no picnic. But it was his own choice, one influenced partly by the retirement of Hampshire stalwart Jimmy Adams over the winter, and partly by conversations with Joe Root and Ed Smith, who made it clear that if there was a route back into the Test side, the vacancy would probably arise in the top three.

“The feedback I got,” he reveals, “was that they’re more comfortable moving someone down the order than up the order. So by opening the batting, if I can do well at the start of the year, and should there be spots available come the Ashes, I’ve given myself the best chance of being selected. I’ve been batting No3 [for Hampshire], so it’s not a huge change tactically. Last year I was in within the first five overs anyway.”

He insists that he’s a better, wiser player these days. Last season was a good one: close to 1,000 first-class runs in difficult conditions, his best return since 2014. Travelling the world, albeit as a white-ball cricketer, has exposed him to a range of different coaches and methods. Closer to home, he particularly enjoyed picking the brains of Hashim Amla at Hampshire last season. “I feel like my game’s definitely improved in the time I’ve been away,” he says. “I feel like I can do better in Test cricket. I’ve had the taste of it. I know what it takes.”

There’s some unfinished business there, no doubt. His last Test innings, lest we forget, was an impressive 76 against New Zealand in Christchurch, after which he was dropped by Smith to make way for Jos Buttler. Three Tests earlier, he was batting beautifully in Perth when Mitchell Starc hit a crack and bowled him with the most freakish delivery of the series. Two Tests before that, he was on the verge of a maiden Test century when Nathan Lyon flung the ball off-balance at the stumps and ran him out by a foot.

It’s been a career of false starts and false dawns, maddening dismissals and the occasional moment of real, glittering promise. But there’s definitely something there; and despite giving him two chances, England are still sufficiently tantalised enough by it that they may yet give him a third. Asked whether he feels like he’s cracked international cricket yet, there’s the first hint of a smile, the first crease in that inscrutable poker face.

“No, I haven’t cracked it,” he grins. “Otherwise I’d still be playing.”