Sonny Baker has only played two ODIs in his career, which is a little over a year old. His first ODI game came against South Africa at Leeds in September last year. He didn’t play the format again until September this year, this time with greater responsibility. In Jofra Archer’s absence in the second ODI against Sri Lanka, Baker was entrusted with opening the bowling with Gus Atkinson.
Baker has bigger aims on his mind
While this is all stuff of dreams for him, Baker doesn’t want to lose sight of bigger things on his radar, that is, to keep honing his skills. Taking a rather strategic approach to his career, he eyes the Pakistan tour as an opportunity to tick one of his checkboxes.
“One of my biggest things that I’m trying to do for the rest of my career is try to break it down into segments: ‘Right, during this period of time, what am I focusing on? What am I trying to get out of it?” Baker said, speaking after he was named men’s young player of the year at the Toyota PCA Awards on Wednesday night.
Pakistan will be his first international assignment outside England, save for a T20I game in Dublin. He has to utilise Pakistan’s conditions to help him figure out the science and magic of reverse swing. Reverse swing has seen a rise in the ODI format after a playing conditions change allowed teams to choose one of the two balls after 34 overs.
“For example, Pakistan would be [learning about] reverse-swing and trying to bang my yorkers, and learn about executing skills in those conditions and reading conditions in Pakistan, because it’s not somewhere I’ve been before. I’m sure that’ll be a very transferable skill to playing in other areas of Asia.”
Will Baker enter IPL auction?
And while he has an eye on the grand scheme of things as far as his career is concerned, Baker wasn’t very certain when it came to the question of entering the IPL auction this December. He had a decent season with Manchester Super Giants (MSG) this year, which would definitely have put him on the radar for the franchise’s IPL counterpart. But Baker would rather let that decision be ECB’s headache than his.
“If [the best thing] is going to the IPL and learning cool stuff out there, then I’ll enter; if it’s staying [in England] for red-ball because you think you’re in with a shout for Ashes stuff, then I’ll absolutely go and do that. It all really depends on what the context is at the time… England will always be number one for me, so I’ll go from there.”
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