Jason Roy

Jason Roy's swaggering strokeplay became a central feature of England's limited-overs cricket after their switch to a more adventurous brand of the game following their miserable display in the 2015 World Cup.

Indeed, Roy was pivotal in their win in the next tournament, making a fifty against South Africa, a brutal 153 against Bangladesh, and 66, 60 and 85, against India, New Zealand and Australia, combining repeatedly in century partnerships with Jonny Bairstow. At the time, the pair had the highest strike rates in history for a pair of opening batters with more than 1000 ODI runs to their name.

Under the leadership of Eoin Morgan, Roy found his voice, making his maiden ODI hundred in the UAE in late 2015 before adding two more at home to Sri Lanka the following summer - including 162 in front of an adoring home crowd at The Oval. In banishing the blues of an Ashes Test thrashing in 2017-18, Roy surpassed Alex Hales' record one-day score for England of 171 with 180 in Melbourne. It was a far cry from the batter who had just endured a dud BBL.

Born in South Africa, Roy came to the UK at ten, was a hugely successful schoolboy cricketer for Whitgift, and made his Surrey debut in the Twenty20 Cup as a 17-year-old in 2008. In 2010 he thumped 101 off 57 balls against Kent at Beckenham, Surrey's first T20 hundred, and later that summer struck an unbeaten 76 from 65 balls against Leicestershire on County Championship debut.

He made his maiden first-class hundred in Surrey's 2011 promotion campaign, and went past 600 runs that season and the next, but he had a forgettable time in first-class cricket in 2013.

The following year, Roy made the leap from a prodigiously talented but erratic young cricketer to a consistent match-winner. He made over 1000 County Championship runs at a rollicking rate, and in the T20 Blast, struck a table-topping 677 runs at 48.35 apiece. His breathtaking power down the ground and penchant for switch-hitting earned him comparisons to Kevin Pietersen.

In 2015, Roy became a fixture in England's limited-overs formats, building on a couple of promising 60s against Australia with a maiden ODI hundred against Pakistan in Abu Dhabi, an innings that provided proof of a growing ability to occasionally play for survival.

After contributing to England's runners-up finish at the 2016 T20 World Cup, he won a maiden IPL contract with Gujarat Lions for the 2017 tournament, though he spent most of his time sitting in the dugout. Roy's form faltered ahead of the 2017 Champions Trophy, and he managed only 18 runs in the tournament, but he rebounded well in the late-September ODIs against West Indies.

Around this time his partnership with Bairstow at the top of the ODI order took off, and crowd-pleasing innings began to occur with increasing regularity. After the Melbourne 180, there were further hundreds against Australia in Cardiff and Chester-le-Street in 2018, followed by another two, against West Indies and Pakistan, in the lead-up to the World Cup. That sparked calls for his inclusion in the Test side, which came in the Test against Ireland and the Ashes series of 2019. Roy was unable to replicate his white-ball dominance in the long format, averaging 13.75 in the four Ashes Tests he played.

In February of 2022, Roy announced he was pulling out of the IPL, where he had been signed by Gujarat Titans, to take a break from cricket.

He was back that summer, though, and played his 100th ODI, against Netherlands, though he missed England's T20 World Cup win later in the year, out of the side due to poor form. He re-emerged at the start of 2023 with ODI centuries against South Africa and Bangladesh, though he lost his spot one innings after that Bangladesh hundred.

Roy went on to smash an unbeaten 145 in the PSL for Quetta Gladiators, with whom he had been since 2018, which he called his best T20 innings at the time. Shortly after, he decided to go fully freelance, turning down an ECB incremental contract so he could play in the MLC in the USA, and going on to also ply his trade in the ILT20 and SA20. In the latter competition, for two seasons running he contributed to getting his side, Paarl Royals, into the playoffs. In 2023, his third season in the Hundred, Roy won the title with Oval Invincibles.