England Under 19s batsman Fin Trenouth is ready to show he’s more than just a hitter
Fin Trenouth seems a lot older than his 19 years. To start with, the England Under 19s batsman is huge, towering over his teammates at an ICC Under 19 Cricket World Cup media session. But it’s an impression that extends beyond physical appearance. Trenouth comes across as mature beyond his years, comfortable with the media without resorting to cliché, and an intelligent person who considers greatly how they should go about playing cricket.
“I’m always thinking,” Trenouth said. “Perhaps sometimes what I do doesn’t always correlate with what I say or think but that’s something I’m working on. I’m always thinking about what do I need to do, what’s best for the team, what do the conditions require. I don’t like people to think I’m just a one-dimensional player, who's only good at going in and striking at above a hundred.”
Trenouth is good at striking above a hundred. In England’s first ICC Under 19 Cricket World Cup warm-up game against Ireland he smashed 73 off 41 balls, and playing for Somerset during the 2016 ECB U17 County Championship, he made headlines after taking Hampshire for an astonishing 330 not out off 307 balls, a record score for the competition.
The knock contained 33 fours and 13 sixes, but as much as it demonstrated his ability to strike the ball a long way, it also showed his ability to cope in tough situations.
“It was pretty strange really,” he said. “I went in with an hour to go until tea. The pitch was turning a bit so I dug in, got to tea, and then after tea thought, ‘it’s quite tough conditions, we’re only a hundred behind, let’s try and make up that hundred quite quickly.’
“So I just thought anything full I’ll look to go over the top, really cover the spin and go straight, and anything over than that just look to block, and that was pretty much my game plan for six hours. For some reason it just came off, nothing went to hand, I just seemed to middle everything. It was a pretty unbelievable feeling at the time, I felt like I couldn’t get out by the end of it.”
Somerset had found themselves 34-3 and 110-5 on tricky surface, and the only significant support Trenouth received was from No.7 Ned Dunning, who contributed 85 to a triple-century stand. Trenouth’s innings made up 69.2 per cent of his side’s total and he is rightly proud not just of the knock, but of the fact that it contributed to a victory which allowed Somerset to qualify for the semi-final of the Under 17 County Championship; playing multi-day cricket is something Trenouth clearly values greatly, both in and of itself, and because of how it can shape his approach in the other forms.
“Playing the longer format was my first experience of having being able to have as much time as you wanted and really digging in and I learnt a lot about myself then and how I would go about it,” he said. “I’m still playing quite a lot of red-ball cricket so obviously that’s very different to my role within this England side quite often. I don’t want to be known this early in my career as just having one dimension, and I don’t feel that’s at all the case with me.
“Even in the one-day stuff you can go in and it can be a tough pitch and you have to dig in for 10-20 overs and then kick on in the back end. A lot of people have said to me that you can cash in later on, the longer you bat, the more runs you’re going to score, and that’s certainly something I play by.”
The ability to adapt is especially important at a tournament like the ICC Under 19 Cricket World Cup, where you’ll face players from a wide variety of places, with little knowledge of their skills or styles, and in a country you might never have played in before.
“All your cricket back in the UK you know five or six players in every team you play, you sort of know what’s coming down, but with this you don’t know anyone, you don’t know anything about them” he said. “With Bangladesh [who are in England’s group, along with Canada and Namibia] you expect some high-quality spin, but we back our skills as a unit and nothing changes, we’ll still look to bat in the same way and bowl in the same way. It’s really important for the people who are batting or bowling to feed back to the rest of us. We talk a lot about adapting to conditions and to the players we are playing so we back ourselves to do that.”
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For Trenouth, a recent recipient of a summer contract at Somerset, cricket was a childhood and family obsession. “I think I got a cricket bat for my fifth birthday and sort of went from there,” he said. “I’ve got two older brothers and my dad played a lot of cricket to a reasonable standard, so there was a lot of cricket in the back garden.”
“We all played together for a small club called Failand and Portbury and I remember for a few years we all had one-to-three coaching every Sunday morning which was pretty good.”
Trenouth has since moved on to Bristol CC, a bigger club, where he’s added wicket-keeping to an extensive list of skills, something which he feels helps to keep him in the game.
“I started probably three years ago, my county side didn’t seem to have a keeper so I thought I’d give it a go and it’s something I really enjoy,” he said. "I got a bit bored of going in at 10.30am, opening the batting, getting out within two overs and my day would be over, I thought that was pointless.
“It’s something I really enjoy and something I see continuing to do because it’s only going to add to my game, it’s another string to my bow. For me though, batting will always come first, I’ve always been a batsman.”
Barring injury, Trenouth won’t be keeping at this tournament – that responsibility will fall to Middlesex gloveman Jack Davies. But, as he’ll be the first to tell you, even if he’s just a batsman, that does not make him one-dimensional.