Jason Roy, who won the World Cup for England, will make an unexpected comeback to red-ball cricket after being selected for Surrey’s County Championship Division One match against Warwickshire at Edgbaston starting on Friday, May 9.
Jason Roy, who has played 87 First-Class matches and amassed 4,850 runs at an average of 36.46 and a strike rate of 80.75, is renowned for his daring batting style and propensity to score quickly in the white-ball formats. In five Test matches, he has also scored 187 runs while playing for England. He last played in a red-ball match during the Covid-plagued summer of 2020 when Surrey played Hampshire in the Bob Willis Trophy. In that encounter, his scores were 4 and 14.
His comeback to the format coincides with Surrey’s attempt to cover for the absence of Ollie Pope and Jamie Smith, the club’s ECB-contracted hitters, who are rested for this match along with Gus Atkinson in preparation for the upcoming Test match against Zimbabwe later this month.
Jason Roy availability also shows how little demand there is for him in the international T20 scene.
After the 2015 ODI World Cup, he was a key player in England’s white-ball revolution. Nevertheless, he was not chosen by the selectors for the Three Lions’ 2023 ODI World Cup title defence in India. After withdrawing three times in 2020, 2022, and 2024 for personal reasons, the right-handed batter failed to locate a team at the Indian Premier League (IPL) 2025 super auction.
The 34-year-old hasn’t participated in an international game since Chattogram in March 2023 against Bangladesh. He will want to get back to his previous level of play and make a case for being called up to the England squad.
Three-time County Champions Surrey are now ranked third in Division One, ten points behind table-toppers Nottinghamshire and six points behind second-place Warwickshire. But after defeating Somerset at the Kia Oval in three days, they would be bursting with confidence. Their team has been strengthened by the arrival of international players like Nathan Smith and Kurtis Patterson. For the first time this season, Tom Lawes also rejoins the contingent.
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