NICK FRIEND: It was only two years ago that James Bracey graduated from Loughborough. But after spending last summer in England’s bio-bubble, he is preparing to tour Sri Lanka as one of seven reserves, keen to transform potential into an opportunity
Two days before entering England’s bio-secure bubble for the first time in June, James Bracey received a message from Ben Stokes. The pair had never met nor spoken, but the welcome text meant a lot.
For a 23-year-old only two summers out of university, his maiden international call-up – albeit as part of an enlarged squad – represented an enormous step in a fledgling career. For context, two months before Stokes’ starring role in the World Cup final, Bracey was making his professional List A debut.
England teams have not always provided such comforting environments for new players stepping into the fold for the first time, but Stokes’ gesture and Bracey’s sense of belonging six months down the line offer a very real glimpse into a group founded on a healthy culture of companionship.
It broke the ice for a young Loughborough graduate who, at the time, had just a single season of white-ball cricket behind him and 32 County Championship appearances to his name.
“The first day that I went into the bubble was daunting,” he tells The Cricketer. “You think these are the biggest names in world cricket. To a lot of people, I’d just been plucked out of thin air, to be honest. A lot of people probably wouldn’t have known who I was. I’d only played against a few of them, some of them I hadn’t met, some of them hadn’t seen me bat.
“But you soon realise that they’re great blokes and they’re human beings. They’re special cricketers but they are guys who you can relate to as well. Spending time with them, you realise that they like the same things as every other cricketer around the circuit: they have the same sense of humour, you can go up to them in the same way.
“It was great to spend time with them and they were very open to helping us as new guys in the setup. Especially with Joe Root, I realised that the more questions you can ask and the more you can observe him, the more help he can give you. He’s really open to doing that. I really enjoyed spending time with them all.”
It is a refreshing takeaway from a mightily impressive young player; he is enjoying life on an upward trajectory that has been accelerated by a combination of his own potential and the by-products of cricket in the coronavirus era.
The Gloucestershire batsman spent close to 10 weeks in Test camps at the Ageas Bowl and Emirates Old Trafford between June and August during series against West Indies and Pakistan, starring with a half century in the intra-squad game that began the summer but restricted to a watching brief thereafter.
It has been a sharp rise for James Bracey, since graduating from university in 2018
And now he finds himself involved once again, with England heading to Sri Lanka on January 2. Bracey is one of seven travelling reserves but also perhaps closer to the 16-man squad than it might appear on first inspection. Amid the absences of Stokes, Rory Burns and Ollie Pope – all three missing out for different reasons - places have opened up.
It seems as though Jonny Bairstow and Dan Lawrence will slot into a top six also featuring Zak Crawley, Dom Sibley, Root and Jos Buttler. There are other options available: for one, Moeen Ali could come in as an allrounder, but otherwise Bracey is the only specialist batsman in reserve, the next cab off the rank.
“That’s how Ed Smith sort of put it to me when I got the call last week,” he says. “Yes, you are on that reserve list, but I’m the only batter amongst them.
“Anything can happen really. I’m only one step away from being at least in contention, and it’s nice to know that it might seem like I’m outside of that 16 at the moment, but I feel like my route in is a lot easier than the other reserves. A lot could happen a lot more clearly.”
Does it feel strange, given the speed at which his stock has soared, to be this close to an international berth? “One day, someone could go down in the nets or while they’re doing fielding or something, and the next day I could be playing,” he knows. “I feel like I’ve been waiting so long now that if and when it does happen, I feel like it will happen really quickly and I’ll be chucked straight in, which isn’t a bad thing.”
But at the same time, he is focused on learning from the first leg of England’s Test winter. Speaking when the squads were announced, national selector Smith explained that one reason for bringing a reserve group was to compensate for the lack of England Lions action and a subsequent desire to give the next generation a taste of life around the main group.
In Crawley, Bracey has a contemporary; the Kent youngster was named in squads for tours of New Zealand and South Africa as cover for more experienced players, but his chances arrived when Buttler and Burns suffered injuries. A year on, he has nailed down his spot for the foreseeable future after a remarkable maiden double hundred at Southampton.
There is a tremendous maturity to Bracey and an infectious, endearing intelligence in the thoughts on his own progression. Like Crawley, his rapid rise has been influenced by English cricket’s use of talent analysis that stretches beyond a straightforward weight of county runs. He recognises that in his short career so far, he is yet to experience “the big season that you associate with getting a Test call”. A first-class average of 34.93, with 13 scores above 50, represents a solid start with more to come, rather than a battering down of the selectors’ door.
The rise of James Bracey: A Bristol boy living his dream
“I wouldn’t say it’s completely sunk in yet,” he adds, reflecting on the last 12 months and his place now on a first Test trip abroad. “I don’t think it will until I get that opportunity to play, or until I get a chance to prove myself fully in county cricket.”
The circumstances of this year have brought with them an increased sense of adulthood. He bought a flat in the summer but is yet to move in, and he is looking forward to the “more senior, responsible role” that awaits him when he returns properly to Gloucestershire duty next summer.
“I reckon I’ve become an adult,” he says. “My cricket has developed pretty quickly, I’ve become a lot more aware of my own game. I think with life in general, I’m starting to grow up a bit. It’s really exciting.”
Being so highly regarded doesn’t necessarily come naturally; this conversation takes place once Bracey has finished modelling duties with bat sponsor Millichamp and Hall, where his rise has made him something of a poster boy. For a disarmingly modest, hardworking youngster, it is a lot to take in.
“I realise that as much as I’ve performed pretty well in the last two or three years, there is a large element of it that is potential. Obviously, the ECB are going down a slightly new recruitment pathway essentially, with talent ID and that sort of stuff. I feel like I’m there almost on potential as well as my performances over the last few years.
“I’d like to be able to play a full summer this summer, really nail down a spot and increase my numbers a little bit. I’d like myself to prove that I’ve got that in me in order to boost my case moving forward.”
Not that being fast-tracked on account of his potential is a bad thing, of course. Rather, the opposite.
Bracey impressed in the intra-squad match at the start of the Test summer
“It’s obviously a great compliment that they’ve identified me as someone who they think has the potential to be successful in Test matches,” he says. “Without the biggest numbers in the world, it’s nice to know that they’ve got the confidence that I’d be able to make the step-up. They obviously think that I’ve got that in me.
“They did a similar thing with Zak, and that so far has gone well. It would be nice to follow a similar path to how he’s bedded into Test cricket. I wouldn’t say it’s a bad thing; I’d say it’s a very good thing that they’ve identified that.
“When I first got picked for England Lions, there were people out there who had done better than me in the last two years numbers-wise, but as I’ve gone through the pathway and have got a bit more of a taste of it, I’ve realised that they’d planned ahead for me. They didn’t just pluck me out of thin air – they’ve done research, they’d maybe asked people about me, seen how I go about things.”
This time last year, Bracey was in Mumbai as part of a specialist camp to work on his batting and wicketkeeping against spin. Twelve months on, he can reflect on that experience with a feeling of real satisfaction in the context of the conditions he is set to face in Galle, even if only in a practice setting. In short, his journey makes sense. “I think it’s really good that I can look back at that now and see that it was done for a reason,” he explains.
Lawrence, Dom Bess, Mason Crane and Amar Virdi were all on the same trip. And while England might not ordinarily take a 23-man travelling party on a two-Test tour, the inclusion of the youthful quintet is a nod towards the building blocks being put in place by Smith and ECB performance director Mo Bobat.
“It’s good that we have that exposure earlier,” Bracey adds. “Especially me – I’d never been over to the subcontinent. The struggles I had there for the first week or two, where it seemed very alien – I had to make some big adjustments to my technique, it’s great that I’ve already been through that period. I’m now in a position where I’m with a Test tour and I don’t have to go through those things now.
“I was given a development plan by the ECB last winter before I went to Mumbai with the batting group, and they gave me a timeline of how my progression towards the Test setup might look.
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“It’s safe to say I’m ahead of that trend purely because of how cricket’s changed in the last year. I’m looking at that as a huge positive; I wasn’t expecting to be around the main side this time last year, so again that’s great. I’ve learnt a lot.”
He returns to the example set by England’s experienced players. What Bracey missed out on by spending his summer in the bubble – chiefly, Gloucestershire’s Bob Willis Trophy campaign - he insists he gained in simply being around Chris Silverwood’s squad.
“With Root and Stokesy, the big thing you pick up is the amount of balls they hit, the amount of practice they do,” he explains. “There’s a reason why they’re two of the best batsmen in the world at the moment. It’s not just the number of balls they hit, but it’s the precision they have in the way they go about things. They go into every session with an aim; without doubt, Joe’s always the first into the nets and always the last to leave.
“He’s very meticulous about what he does, and it’s very precise. Hence, why he can do things on the pitch that a lot of people can’t. That’s one thing I took – they’re not just naturally talented, they work really hard at their game as well. That’s definitely something that I’d always think of myself, so it shows that however high you get or however good you get, there’s always that hard work to put in.”
For Bracey, that work includes developing multiple strands. On England Lions’ landmark, unbeaten tour of Australia a year ago, he emerged as the side’s main wicketkeeper and, while that competency is unlikely to be utilised in the near future by a national side brimming with options behind the stumps, it offers another string to his bow. “I think my keeping’s at a point now where I’d be able to more than hold my own in a Test match with the gloves,” he says.
“I think I’ve got that confidence in my skills now. My keeping has developed exactly as I wanted it, but you go through phases like this where there are a lot of keepers around at the moment. But in five years’ time, you never know – there might only be one or two who are really challenging.”
In the short term, therefore, it might be his aptitude at short leg that proves most helpful – he took a catch there while on as a substitute fielder during the final Test against Pakistan and has performed the role regularly for Gloucestershire. On England’s last trip to Sri Lanka, Keaton Jennings starred under the lid; before him, James Taylor was impeccable.
“They are fine little things that, if two or three people are competing for a space and you offer that extra dimension, then it’s going to be really important,” he adds. “Obviously, your batting and keeping are going to be prioritised but it’s something that can tip the scales in your favour if you keep working on it. It’s something I’ve been working hard on in the last year. Especially when I get out to Sri Lanka, I think it’s something I’ll continue to top up.”
Bracey returned to Gloucestershire for their T20 Blast campaign as the county reached Finals Day for the first time in 13 years
Consult anyone in cricket who has come across Bracey and the response will rarely veer from high praise for a level-headed, studious youngster with a bright future: during the summer lockdown period, he took up an online course in journalism, and on Tuesday he published a piece about the impact of social media on elite athletes.
It is a subject that has interested him for some time, but his fascination grew as the year wore on.
At this juncture, Bracey has avoided much criticism. He uses Twitter mostly to follow his beloved Bristol Rovers and engage with his sponsors, while his Instagram account is focused more on catching up with friends from school and university. But he has seen its impact on those he is closest to, having spent his summer wrapped up in a bubble along with the biggest names in the English game.
“It was quite eye-opening,” he reflects. “You don’t think about how many eyes are on you or how many people are watching you when you’re not actually involved. It made me think about it this summer because there were no fans in the ground. You feel like no one’s watching, you feel like it’s almost club cricket. It’s weird.
“Obviously, I haven’t experienced Test cricket in a full stadium before, but you then go on Twitter and you speak to people outside of it and you realise how much traction this summer got from a viewing point of view. You understand how many people are watching, how many people have opinions. You watch the Sky coverage, having been integrated into the group. You sort of feel criticism and what people are saying a lot more, even if it’s not about you.
“You can see how it affects people and how people deal with it. I can imagine it is really tough – you saw some of the stuff that went round after Jofra was suspended for a game. Some of the stuff that was said and the amount of people who have their say, it’s amazing that people have to go through that regularly. It will be interesting – I’m sure I’ll experience it at some point if I have a bad patch. It was definitely eye-opening and something I hadn’t realised how much of an effect it could have.”
Still only 23, there is much to admire in James Bracey. As he prepares to set off for Sri Lanka at the end of a year that has forced him to grow up, he speaks like a man ready for his next step, whenever – and whatever – that may be.
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