Brilliant Brooky – one of the world’s best
Harry Brook has emerged as a superstar of the world game, and in late 2024 was briefly ranked as the number one Test Match batter in the world.
Brook, now 26, had just hit three centuries in two months away in Pakistan and New Zealand, including a stunning career best 317 against the former at Multan in October.
He shared 454 for the fourth wicket with Joe Root in a first Test victory – England’s highest ever partnership for that wicket in Tests. Ironically, it was his Yorkshire team-mate Root who replaced him as number one after just a week in that position.
But there’s every likelihood Brook will be there again sooner rather than later.
In late 2022, he won the T20 World Cup with England in Australia and scored his first three Test centuries in a 3-0 series victory in Pakistan. It capped a dream year which started with an international debut against the West Indies in Barbados in a January T20 series.
Brook was signed for £1.3m to play for Sunrisers Hyderabad in the 2023 Indian Premier League – a couple of months after debuting in ODIs.
Though his first IPL largely didn’t work out, he did score one century for Sunrisers. In 2024, he missed the IPL because of the passing of his grandmother. He will play for Delhi Capitals in 2025.
That Brook missed the 2024 IPL allowed him to start the summer with Yorkshire, and he played five Rothesay County Championship matches, contributing to a promotion-winning campaign. He hit two hundreds in a haul of 409 runs, including 100 not out off just 69 balls in the opening week draw against Leicestershire at Headingley.
That was typical Brook – a batter who likes to impose himself on attacks.
A product of the Burley-in-Wharfedale club and Sedbergh School, Brook captained England’s Under 19s at the one-day World Cup in New Zealand in early 2018. He played Yorkshire age-group cricket from Under 13s and came through the Academy.
In 2022, Brook, contracted to Yorkshire through to the end of 2027, scored 1,403 runs in Championship and T20 cricket for the county, including three four-day centuries amongst a run of nine fifty plus scores in 10 innings to start the season.
The joint players’ player of the year winner, he was also named Yorkshire’s members’ player of the year for the second year running.
He picked up player-of-the-series awards in the T20 and Test tours of Pakistan in late 2022, the latter thanks to scores of 153, 87, 108 and 111 across five innings. They came either side of the T20 World Cup success.
He also scored a Test best of 186 in early 2023 against New Zealand at Wellington, and scored a superb match-clinching 75 in the second innings of the third Ashes Test against Australia at Headingley in July as England drew that series 2-2.
He was named as England’s Player of the Year in 2023 and was awarded the Freedom of Bradford.
Brook was also named in the 2024 ICC Test Team of the Year for the first time.
UPDATED: Feb 2025.
