England’s Next Gen: Who are the bright young things offering hope for the future?

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England’s Test team are still licking their wounds after their humbling Down Under. While white-ball cricket takes centre stage for the foreseeable future, the red-ball side will not reconvene until early June, when a three-match series against New Zealand begins at Lord’s.

There will be plenty in the ranks who feel they have points to prove after the Ashes. It is unlikely the whole ‘Bazball’ building will be bulldozed in a fit of rage. More likely is that the supporting beams will remain, the stained-glass windows will be polished, and new walls will be constructed around them.

Many of this Ashes side will get their chance to put things right against Australia when they come to England in 2027, and some will even be able to show they have learnt from their chastening experiences this winter as members of the touring party for the 2029-30 Ashes.

However, if a complete refresh were deemed necessary, what might the new England squad look like? Here are 14 prospects who might, with a fair wind and maybe a bucketload of runs or wickets, find themselves getting the call.

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Ben McKinney

Age: 21
Role: Left-handed batter — opener
County: Durham
First-class career: 23 matches, 1,286 runs at 32.97, 4 x 100, highest score 153

When Ben McKinney is batting, Ben Stokes hangs around that little bit longer — so senior sources at Durham have told The Athletic, anyway.

Chester-Le-Street’s water has hydrated a merry-go-round of quick bowlers in the past three decades, but the towering McKinney is an international opener in waiting. A 6ft 7in frame makes him tricky to bowl at: decent-length deliveries are turned into half-volleys while, against spin, McKinney’s long levers allow him to reach balls even if his footwork is a smidgen off.

Like many batters, he is susceptible to treacle toes early on. But once he gets going, my word is McKinney a joy to watch.

In an alternative world, he could be starring now alongside Granit Xhaka in local Premier League side Sunderland’s midfield, but he opted for cricket instead. He was signed by Manchester Originals in the 2025 Hundred draft despite not yet having made his domestic T20 debut, and made twin half-centuries in the pre-Ashes warm-up against the full Test squad.

Don’t rule out a Test debut this year.

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Archie Vaughan

Age: 20
Role: Right-handed batter – top order/off-spin bowler
County: Somerset
First-class career: 18 matches, 625 runs at 24.03, highest score 80; 35 wickets at 32.42, best bowling figures 6-96

One of a handful on the current county circuit who can make 1990s children feel old. Watch Archie Vaughan’s checked drive from a distance and his 2005-Ashes-winning-captain father, Michael, flutters into the mind. However, as Somerset team-mate Andy Umeed reminded him during a huddle ahead of his county debut, Vaughan junior has his own path to forge.

He began the 2025 English summer opening the batting in red-ball cricket but finished it learning his trade at No 6 — a smart move by Somerset.

Vaughan is yet to make three figures in first-class cricket but has a century in the 50-over format. His more than handy off-spin — he snared 11 wickets in a late 2024 victory over Surrey that gave Somerset a genuine sniff of the County Championship title — makes Vaughan a bona fide all-rounder. He effectively kept England international Shoaib Bashir out of Somerset’s XI at times last summer.

He has captaincy experience with England Under-19s and is spending this winter playing Grade cricket for Mosman in Sydney, Australia. Naturally, they started Vaughan in the 2nd XI but he quickly became a 1st XI regular.

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Asa Tribe

Age: 21
Role: Right-handed batter — top order/off-spin bowler
County: Glamorgan
First-class career: 16 matches, 1,013 runs at 44.04, 3 x 100, highest score 206

The Jersey… Jayawardene? Jardin? OK, OK, you get the gist.

Asa Tribe popped his head above the proverbial parapet with a run of three consecutive 50-over hundreds in 2025. Unbeaten scores of 122 and 131 for Glamorgan in the One-Day Cup were followed by 175 for Jersey against Papua New Guinea in the ICC World Cup Challenge League.

Either side of those three knocks, he made half-centuries (71 and 53 not out), before rounding it all off with a double-ton (206) in the County Championship against Northamptonshire. Talk about being in nick…

Tribe then scored 129 not out for England Lions against Australia A last month to make it five hundreds and two 50s in 12 competitive innings.

Signed by Glamorgan — first on a rookie deal and then, last April, on a full contract — having impressed while at Cardiff Met University, this lad is a headline writer’s dream.

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James Rew

Age: 22
Role: Left-handed batter — top order/wicketkeeper
County: Somerset
First-class career: 57 matches, 3,383 runs at 41.25, 11 x 100, highest score 221

James Rew has 14 professional hundreds already. 14! A remarkable talent? Yes, very much so, and all while being happy to admit openly that he sometimes nods off when he is next in to bat. Crucially, though, Rew is far from dozy when he makes it out to the middle. In reaching his 11th red-ball hundred in the 2025 English domestic summer, he became the youngest player to do so since Dennis Compton in 1939.

Rew’s breakthrough season came in 2023, when he was third highest scoring Englishman in the County Championship’s top tier. His 1,086 runs at 57.15 included five centuries and saw him soak up the third most balls of anybody in the division.

He also passed four figures in 2025 (1,053 at 45.78, three x 100s), this time batting largely at No 4 rather than No 6. Rew’s strike rate that season (60.65) was 10 clicks higher than in 2023 (50.04), but he puts that simply down to situations rather than conscious thought.

Rew is not yet a regular in Somerset’s highly successful T20 side but that is set to change in 2026, with space being cleared for him and his younger brother Thomas (more on him later) in the middle order. He’s played in the ILT20 this winter, having made 62 not out from 44 balls on his competitive debut in that format. The stage for that knock? Just the semi-finals of the T20 Blast.

Known as the ‘G.O.A.T’ (Greatest of All Time) by his club-mates at Taunton St Andrews Cricket Club, Rew’s ability was no secret on the Somerset youth circuit. There is a difference between “promising kid” and “international cricketer-to-be”, though.

Ask Rew himself, and he will humbly tell you that he is still way off the standard, but others may well have a different opinion. He was named in the preliminary Test squad against Zimbabwe last summer.

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Ralphie Albert

Age: 18
Role: Right-handed batter — middle order/slow left-arm bowler
County: Surrey
First-class record: 1 match, 68 runs at 34, highest score 63; 2 wickets at 4.50, best bowling figures 2-7

Ralphie Albert does not have a famous father like some names on this list, but his mum’s dad is a pretty handy snooker player who also excelled in the jungle. Jimmy White is a six-time World Championship finalist and finished third in series nine of reality show I’m a Celebrity… Get Me Out of Here!, but he might soon be usurped as the family’s leading sports star.

Highly rated at Surrey, the 2025 domestic summer gave the wider cricketing world a glimpse of Albert’s all-round talent. He made 96 batting at No 7 in just his second List A appearance, at Trent Bridge against Nottinghamshire, that knock coming not long after his orthodox left-arm spin claimed 10 wickets in England Under-19s’ second unofficial Test against India.

By September, Albert was debuting in the County Championship in a must-win game away to Hampshire and scoring 63 off 90 balls in Surrey’s second innings.

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Thomas Rew

Age: 18
Role: Right-handed batter — top order/wicketkeeper
County: Somerset
First-class record: 1 match, 66 runs at 33, highest score 47

The ‘Baby G.O.A.T’ to his elder brother James, Thomas Rew might just end up being the best of England’s current young crop.

An unbeaten 84 in the One-Day Cup against Durham last summer had observers cooing. It was not just the runs, but the way he made them and his temperament. Rew made it look like it was his 200th 50-over appearance, not his second.

Rew’s love of cricket grew from travelling around watching his brother’s games, and it didn’t take long for them to be locked in battle, whether in the nets, on the golf course or on a squash court. There is plenty of love between them but also no love lost with Rew, as the junior sibling, admitting to having occasionally misplaced his temper.

He is captaining England Under-19s at the age group’s 50-over World Cup this month in Zimbabwe and Namibia, and it is not unthinkable that he will have a full international cap by the time 2026 is out. Between that? He has A-Level exams in economics, geography and maths to sit.

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Rehan Ahmed

Age: 21
Role: Right-handed batter — top or middle order/leg-spin bowler
County: Leicestershire
First-class record: 36 matches, 2,022 runs at 33.7, 6 x 100, highest score 136; 78 wickets at 37.15, best bowling figures 7-93

OK, OK, so Rehan Ahmed has already played in five Tests for England. But you’re allowed a couple of overaged players in an under-21s football team, aren’t you? And how can you not want Ahmed included, anyway?

There were plenty who said that after he was omitted from this winter’s Ashes tour despite making five red-ball centuries and taking 26 wickets at 23.92 for Leicestershire during their 2025 promotion summer. A move up the batting order was designed to help Ahmed express himself and, while he needs little invitation to do so, he duly boshed his way to 760 runs at a strike-rate of 75.69.

There has been excitement about Ahmed ever since he travelled to Lord’s as a 12-year-old nets bowler for England ahead of the 2016 Test series against Pakistan. He snicked off Sir Alastair Cook and reckons he trapped Ben Stokes leg before wicket, too. Ahmed started learning his leg-spin by watching YouTube videos of the late, great Shane Warne and spent a joyful 40 minutes bowling in front of his hero on the Nursery Ground at Lord’s in 2017.

The most recent of his caps came in October 2024, and all of his appearances to date have come in India or Pakistan. However, he could be peaking by the time the next Ashes tour arrives in 18 months’ time.

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Rocky Flintoff

Age: 17
Role: Right-handed batter — middle order/right-arm fast-medium bowler
County: Lancashire
First-class record: 5 matches, 137 runs at 15.22, Highest score 32

The surname is always going to draw attention, isn’t it? But sit down to watch Rocky Flintoff in action for any period of time and you’ll see, well, firstly the spitting image of his old man with bat in hand, but also a player of genuine quality.

In 2024, aged 16, Flintoff became both the youngest player to make a century for England Under-19s and Lancashire’s youngest first-class player. In January last year, he passed three figures batting at No 9 against a Cricket Australia XI for England Lions. He then earned a wildcard Hundred deal last summer.

However, having missed the start of the summer with a back injury, he withdrew from the Northern Superchargers’ squad after spending three games on the bench. Flintoff did not manage a single Lancashire appearance in 2025, owing to either injury or international commitments, but hopes are high for a fruitful year this time.

He is yet to bowl a ball in professional cricket but, according to Lions team-mate James Coles, is lightning quick. “He bowled at me in the nets, and I forgot that he is only 16,” Coles told The Cricketer in early 2025. “He was bowling gas. It was like, ‘What the heck is going on? This is nuts’. He’s going to be pretty incredible.”

Dad has left him big shoes to fill and he should be allowed breathing space, but there is something very exciting about Rocky F.

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Eddie Jack

Age: 20
Role: Right-arm fast-medium bowler
County: Hampshire
First-class record: 7 matches, 32 wickets at 26.43, best bowling figures 4-29

One of those modern phenoms who made his first-class debut for England Lions rather than his county, Hampshire, Eddie Jack’s maiden wicket was Indian Test star Yashasvi Jaiswal. Jack was playing in that game because Lions head coach Andrew Flintoff had watched him in action for the Professional County Select XI a little earlier in the 2025 summer.

While with the Lions, Jack impressed enough to be invited along for the Test team’s preparations at Headingley, but then had to skip it because he was needed by Hampshire. That invitation may have come around in part due to the recommendation of Mark Wood, who spent some time coaching the Lions while recovering from injury. Wood was extremely impressed with what he saw, citing a consistent, repeatable action and a real snap at the crease.

With Jack’s attitude and willingness to learn, the pre-existing tools he possesses can make him a Test bowler. He was awarded an England developmental contract in November.

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James Minto

Age: 18
Role: Left-handed batter/left-arm fast-medium bowler
County: Durham
First-class career: 6 matches, 158 runs at 26.33, highest score 67; 13 wickets at 26.69, best bowling figures 5-21

Is this the next taxi off Durham’s fast-bowling rank? Steve Harmison, Liam Plunkett, Graham Onions, Wood, Brydon Carse (not a native of the north-east, but now an avid Sunderland fan), Matthew Potts… James Minto?

Minto made his County Championship debut against Surrey at the Oval in September 2024 and immediately caught the eye — and the bat handle, in Rory Burns’ case — with an 87mph bouncer. He later grabbed a pair of lower-order wickets to become the second youngest player since the Second World War to chalk up a first-class dismissal.

He then spent that winter on an under-19s tour, but only after a week observing the England Lions squad, where he worked with Andrew Flintoff.

Minto made a first-class half-century, scoring 67, after being sent in as nightwatchman in a County Championship game against Nottinghamshire last May.

He was the youngest ever to reach that milestone for Durham. However, expect him to be known more for his bowling in future.

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Harry Moore

Age: 18
Role: Right-handed batter — middle order/right-arm fast-medium bowler
County: Derbyshire
First-class career: 3 matches, 48 runs at 16; 6 wickets at 23.83; best bowling figures 3-55

Described by Derbyshire coach Mickey Arthur as “hand on heart, the best 17-year-old I’ve ever coached”, Harry Moore starred with both bat and ball in a One-Day Cup victory over Somerset in Taunton in August 2024. His tender age meant he had to be chaperoned for his post-match interview afterwards. That performance, and his burgeoning reputation, convinced Derbyshire to upgrade his rookie contract to a three-year deal.

Moore spent early 2025 in South Africa with England Under-19s before a back injury ruled him out of the entire domestic summer. The Athletic expects to see plenty more of this 6ft 7in all-rounder.

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Sonny Baker

Age: 22
Role: Right-arm fast bowler
County: Hampshire
First-class career: 7 matches, 22 wickets at 33.9, best bowling figures 5-72

You could argue Sonny Baker’s inclusion on this list is cheating, given he has already represented England in both white-ball formats (albeit he is yet to take a wicket in them), but he is a player of huge potential.

A mature head on very young shoulders, Baker’s body has taken time to adapt to the fact that he consistently gets a lump of leather to travel 22 yards at 90+ mph.

Born in Devon, he started his career up the road at Somerset and spent the best part of several summers on the sidelines with back injuries. However, Baker was fit but not picked for the majority of 2024 and therefore left to join Hampshire and work with bowling coach Graeme ‘Pop’ Welch.

He went viral online with an in-swinging yorker playing for Somerset’s 2nd XI a few years back, and has a YouTube highlight reel that includes the dismissal of England stalwart Jonny Bairstow for a duck, a five-ball set in the Hundred from which long-time Australia batter David Warner could not score a run, and a hat-trick for Manchester Originals against Northern Super Chargers.

Baker was awarded a one-year central contract by England in November.

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Isaac Mohammed

Age: 17
Role: Left-handed batter – opener
County: Worcestershire
First-class career: 1 match, 9 runs at 4.50

Despite not being eligible to sit his UK driving test when the 2025 summer began, Isaac Mohammed slipped into Worcestershire’s white-ball teams nervelessly in June. He has great confidence in his own abilities. What are those? Being comfortable against pace, picking up length rapidly and having a 360-degree hitting range. What’s not to like?

He came through the academy at Worcestershire’s local rivals Warwickshire, but signed a three-year deal at New Road midway through last summer. That move may well have been influenced by the fact his uncle, former England star Moeen Ali, made the same switch early in his career, as did Moeen’s brother Kadeer — currently Worcestershire’s assistant head coach.

Mohammed then returned 154 runs at a strike-rate of 154 in the T20 Blast, and was a One-Day Cup regular.

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Josh Hull

Age: 21
Role: Left-arm fast bowler
County: Leicestershire
First-class career: 22 matches, 44 wickets at 42.72, best bowling figures 3-13

The last of The Athletic’s already-capped picks, Josh Hull unexpectedly played a Test at the Oval against Sri Lanka in September 2024. He did OK too, taking three wickets at 30.33 a piece.

At the time of that international debut, Hull had 11 County Championship wickets at north of 80 for Leicestershire, but had impressed with a five-for on his England Lions debut in the August. He was, in essence, an archetypal ‘Bazball’ pick.

Hull has two points of difference, being both a left-armer and 6ft 7in tall. His numbers are far from what was traditionally required to play Test cricket — he is yet to take a first-class five-wicket haul — but, as Rob Key told the Daily Telegraph a few summers ago: “I don’t care how many wickets you take. I want to know how hard you are running in, how hard you are hitting the pitch, and are you able to sustain pace at 85 to 88mph.”

How long Key remains England’s managing director remains to be seen, but Hull will stay in the frame either way. He has a developmental contract.

Hull would, but for injuring a thigh muscle, have been in the squad for the tour to Pakistan that came immediately after his Test debut.

He made 10 County Championship appearances last summer and has been with the Lions in Australia this winter.