Sam Billings keeps Kent's flame burning

It is not often that Marcus Trescothick is made to look stupid. The man was one of the finest opening batsmen to play for England. He scored over 10,000 runs for his country, hit 26 centuries and helped win one of the greatest Ashes series of all time. Brett Lee and Glenn McGrath tried for years to get the better of him. Often even they failed. But on a July day in Taunton, Trescothick had his nose rubbed in the dirt by a kid from Kent.

Kent whizz-kid Sam Billings stops to listen as I read out Trescothick's post-mortem verdict. "Now I know what it was like for an opposing captain when Jos Buttler was blasting bowlers all over the County Ground," the Somerset captain said. "Sam Billings may turn out to be a rival for Jos' England place in the future because he absolutely annihilated us. It didn't matter how I adjusted the field, Billings would find a gap and the boundary. A feeling of helplessness overtook me as he basically took the mickey whatever I did."

Billings had just blasted a 46-ball hundred featuring ramps, sweeps and a switch-hit pull for six off Alfonso Thomas. He ended up on 135 not out off just 58 balls.

The words, coming from a man Billings had watched on television growing up, left him flattered.

"He's been there and done it on the big stage. Tres is a phenomenal cricketer and it's one of those huge compliments, isn't it?" he says. "To be mentioned in the same bracket as Jos is a massive compliment too. I've grown up playing against him and with him and I've seen first hand what he can do from the other end."

The knock is set to earn the Loughborough University graduate a share of the Walter Lawrence Trophy for the season's quickest century. Australia's bruising hitter Dan Christian, against Kent, also chalked up a 46-ball effort. The accolade, at least, will be a long-serving pointer to an innings he "can't even remember". "It was one of those days where I thought I could hit every ball for four or six," he says. "It was just a complete blur."

Billings and Buttler share many characteristics. Both are hard-hitting, aggressive and innovative wicketkeeper-batsmen, born out of the T20 era. In Buttler-esque style, Billings wound up with 458 runs at an average of 114.5 in the Royal London One-Day Cup. He faced just 297 balls, hit 17 of them for six - more than anyone else - and had a strike rate of 154.21. Not that Kent's shining star, whose side fell at the semi-final stage to Warwickshire, needs telling. I make a mistake when recounting the figures. He politely interrupts: "The average was 114.5, actually. I was top of the national averages. Don't do me out of the runs!"

They were stats that made the selectors take notice. They ordered Billings to link up with the England Lions camp, as cover for Jason Roy, towards the end of the triangular A team series with New Zealand and Sri Lanka. Billings didn't get his go this time but their interest in a young man with huge talent was heartening. "A great compliment," Billings says - but national honours are no new thing.

Billings represented ECB Under-16s against Australia Schools U-16s back in 2007. England won every game, he proudly tells me. Joe Root was also part of that team. A year later Billings turned out for the U-17s against New Zealand. Buttler also played - but it was the Kent lad who took the gloves. In the U-18s and 19s, Billings was joined by Root, allrounder Ben Stokes, and left-arm spinner Danny Briggs. All three have gone on to play for England.

Billings doesn't deny that England is on his mind, but he is realistic. "I'm nowhere near the level of Jos but it's great to see him doing well. I use that as a kind of encouragement," he says. "I played with Joe Root and Ben Stokes growing up. They are two great blokes - and two serious, serious cricketers. Vincey [James Vince] and Danny Briggs are my age too. It shows what's possible. Hopefully I can get in the Lions programme over winter. It's just a case of putting in the performances and hoping they'll be rewarded. That's what I've got to do."

Wicketkeeping is in the blood in the Garden of England. Les Ames played 47 Tests for his country before World War I. He has a stand at St Lawrence Ground in Canterbury named after him. Godfrey Evans played 91 Tests in a 13-year period after World War II, and then there's Alan Knott, arguably the greatest wicketkeeper to have played for England and perhaps the best ever in the world. "It's impossible to ignore these guys," Billings says. "Their names and pictures are plastered all around the place. You can't really hide from it. I don't know why Kent produces so many good keepers but it just happens."

More recently Geraint Jones played 34 Tests and was part of the Ashes-winning team in 2005. Such has been Billings' rise, Jones was sent on loan to Gloucestershire and has now been released into the wilderness.

The situation was "far from ideal" for the two, Billings admits, but he purrs with warm appreciation of the man he replaced. "He's a really good bloke who I can't speak highly enough of," he says. "He had the same position with Paul Nixon, and when the time comes in 15 years or so, maybe it'll be the same for me. I've learnt so much from him, everything.

"He's 38 now and he's kept in great physical shape. He's still one of the fittest blokes at Kent. With the glovework and batting side of things, he's just told me to back the way I play and don't try and change things. We're similar in that we're both very natural keepers and batters."

Since 2006, Jones had taken the gloves for Kent for 115 consecutive County Championship games. But the county - whose array of young stars are beginning to shine - has confidence in youth. They threw Billings into two dead rubbers at the end of the last season. He scored 8, 13 and 24 and had experienced enough to want more. "I finished last year and my aim was to become the first-choice wicketkeeper," he says. "So I jetted off to Sydney over the winter and it was one of the best decisions I've ever made."

It was a brave move. The previous winter was a harrowing one down under. Billings was granted an ECB scholarship to the Darren Lehmann Cricket Academy in Adelaide - Root and Roy are two of their previous graduates - but "it just wasn't for me", he says. An intense schedule left Billings with a stress fracture of the foot. The momentum had gone back then but his thirst to return to the country had not.

"I'd worked out exactly what I needed to do in Australia," Billings continues. "I needed to be fitter and improve on the mental side of my game. I was getting up at 5.30am every morning to work with Glenn McGrath's personal trainer. I was getting beasted. He pushed me to the limits and made me so much fitter. I played club cricket for Penrith, too. They don't take any prisoners. They think all the Poms are rubbish and tell you that too - it toughens you up." The hard graft paid off. Billings returned a better keeper and a better batsman - and Kent's No. 1 gloveman. Jones was to never play for the county again.

It was only by chance that Billings, knee-high to a grasshopper as a kid, ever took the gloves. He jokes he used to bowl "rapid thunderbolts" before a chance injury to Christian Marsh - the son of ex-Kent captain Steve - created an opportunity for a keen 12-year-old. "The coaches asked if anyone had ever kept," Billings recalls, "so I thought I'd just give it a go. I dived around a lot and there were no byes."

Before then, his skills had been honed at the New Beacon prep school in Sevenoaks, and on the landing at the Billings family home. A young Sam got his first bat when he was three, and had a daily dose of cricket from his dad. "He used to throw balls to me after he'd had a shower before school and it all went from there," he says.

Billings stepped up from his landing to progress into the Kent system aged eight. He was welcomed into the academy when he was 14 and to the England set-up at 16. But cricket wasn't the only sport on the agenda. By that time Billings had moved to the now £7500-a-year Haileybury school near Hertford, where a new hobby had come calling. The teenager had become a racquets protege.

"I used to play a bit of racquets and enjoyed it. It's a fantastic game - very elitist, there are like 20 courts in the country - but it's brilliant. It probably doesn't help the cricket directly. Maybe the double-handed backhand is a bit similar to the switch hit, but it's great for hand-eye co-ordination," he explains. "We played it a few weeks ago in a rain break at Rugby School. Myself, Fabian Cowdrey and Sam Northeast went down there and some of the boys came to watch. There were a lot of posh-boy jibes from the lads. Sam, especially, is sensational."

The racquet-wielding trio are Kent's future. All three have progressed through the county's academy system - a victory for youth development. Billings now wants the "youngster" tag to be replaced with a "winners" one: "We're a relatively young side and we're learning - but we don't want to be known as youngsters now. We need to make match-winning contributions and we feel we can do something special. We want next year to be our year."