
Rory Hamilton-Brown
Name: Rory Hamilton-Brown
Teams: England U-19s, Surrey, Sussex
Rory Hamilton-Brown, essentially, is a young one-day player for Sussex, who occasionally opens the batting in an “explosive” way, and bowls off stump off-spinning darts – my personal favourite.
Rory is basically famous for two things: for the ECB thinkin’ he was a naughty boy for drinking alcohol before an U-19 Test match (when he wasn’t, uh oh!), and for his matchwinning performance against Warwickshire in the Twenty20 quarters. Oh, and he’s mates with Danny Cipriani. “How cool?”

What a bastard...in a good way
Rory is more than that though: he’s just pretty cool. He is just so cool. If most young English players appear to be the zany dork with oversized magnified NHS spectacles who can barely mutter a whisper of even the most mundane cricketing doublespeak (Will Beer perhaps?), Rory Hamilton-Brown is the bully. He’s big, he’s strong, he looks like a bit of a bastard. I bet he’s nutted someone before. And he’s pretty talented too.
At the Twenty20 game against Warwickshire he was getting a bit of stick from the crowd – ‘Oi, so who’s a pretty boy then?’ etc. Some alternate fledglings may have wimpered and quivered, but not our Rory – he went out and took 3 wickets. Oh yes.
Could he play for England? At this time, he’s about as close to getting into the team as Mark Ramprakash (which is quite a long away indeed). He has the potential to be a decent one-day player, but is a batsman or an off-spinner? Hopefully he can be more than what Jamie Dalrymple offered. Which shouldn’t be hard.