Aneurin Donald’s white-ball rise has led to him landing a prestigious deal to play in this winter’s Big Bash League in Australia.
Daily Mail Sport understands that Welshman Donald, on his way to Pakistan with England’s one-day team overnight, has signed for champions Perth Scorchers.
This winter’s competition runs from December to January and will also feature former England captain Ben Stokes, Jamie Overton and Chris Jordan amongst its overseas stars.
Last month Donald, at 29, became the oldest batter to make his T20 debut for England since Dawid Malan in 2017. He played all three matches in the series against Sri Lanka, and although did not go on to make a big score, showed his destructive six-hitting ability in several cameos.
His strike rate in Twenty20 over the past two years is second globally only to India sensation Vaibhav Sooryavanshi, and Donald will remain Down Under after participating in England’s white-ball tour of Australia next month.
The T20 section of that trip will see uncapped players Thomas Rew of Somerset and Hampshire’s Eddie Jack introduced for the first time.
That pair will travel to Australia for the five-match series from the Caribbean, where they will be featuring in limited-overs fixtures for England Lions against a West Indies A side managed by Ottis Gibson, the leading candidate to become head coach of Durham this winter.
The Lions squad will be named on Friday and although it will include the majority of the nine players awarded 12-month ECB development contracts earlier this week, Yorkshire all-rounder Matthew Revis is unavailable.
Twenty-four-year-old Revis, who like Harry Brook emerged from the junior section of Burley-in-Wharfedale, has undergone surgery on his Achilles.
Aneurin Donald’s displays domestically made England take notice at the age of 29
Discarded Test opener Zak Crawley, meanwhile, has signed a new deal with recently-promoted Kent days after falling off England’s central contracts list.
Crawley’s 12-month agreement means that Kent will pay his wages for the first time in six years. Under English cricket’s system, the ECB take responsibility for remunerating those on full contracts, a group he joined in the autumn of 2020.
The 28-year-old last featured in a one-day international defeat to Sri Lanka in January, days after being part of the Ashes squad thrashed 4-1 in Australia.
Although Rob Key, England’s director of cricket, has insisted that the door is not shut permanently on the 64-cap batsman, he failed to score a hundred in 12 County Championship appearances as Kent finished runners-up in Division Two last summer.
Quelling speculation that his future might lie elsewhere on the county scene, Crawley confirmed his commitment and added that he was ‘looking forward to the challenge of competing for Kent’ in the top flight next summer.
