Born in Norfolk and educated at Stowe, Ben Howgego is a top-order batsman who worked his way up through the ranks from the Northamptonshire Cricket Academy and age-group sides before cracking into the second XI in 2005, while he was still at school. Emphasising how much more developed as a cricketer he was than his contemporaries, he he hammered 201 not out in a twenty-over house match at school, with 21 of the last 36 balls he faced being dispatched for six. He became a fixture in Northamptonshire's second XI, scoring his first hundred for them in 2006 and finding a place in the ECB Development of Excellence XI as a middle-order batsman in the same year.

But it was as an opener that he made his first-class debut in a late season game against Gloucestershire in 2008, and that is likely to be his role in the future. He was awarded a summer contract for the 2008 and 2009 seasons, to tie in with his Sports Science studies at the University of Exeter and narrowly missed out on a half-century against the touring Australians in 2009, making 46 against an attack that included Peter Siddle, Stuart Clark and Mitchell Johnson. Howgego began the 2010 season with the Exeter university side, scoring three half-centuries before he returned to Northants' second XI and promptly cracked 113 against Gloucestershire. Further successes proved slightly harder to come by, but Howgego was given more opportunities with the senior first XI as the season progressed.
Liam Brickhill August 2010