The Journey of Jonathan Trott in the Cricket World

• FULL NAME: Ian Jonathan Leonard Trott
• BORN Place: 22 April 1981 Cape Town South Africa
• AGE: 42 Year 349days
• NICKNAMES: Booger,Trotters
• BATTING STYLE: Right hand Bat
• BOWLING STYLE: Right arm Medium
• PLAYING ROLE: Top order Batter
• HEIGHT: 6ft
• EDUCATION: Stellenbosch University
• RELATIONS: KC Jackson

Teams

• England
• Boland
• England Lions
• Marylebone Cricket Club
• Otago
• South Africa Under-15s
• South Africa Under-19s
• Warwickshire
• Western Province

On rare occasions, first views can turn out to be perfectly true. In what was basically a trial match, Jonathan Trott’s commanding 245 on his second XI debut for Warwickshire in 2002 hinted at the potential of a unique talent.

After all, it was the biggest debut total in Second XI Championship history, and unlike Kevin Pietersen in a similar circumstance three years previously, it encouraged Warwickshire to sign Trott.

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Not Trott, though. After being benched, he shattered his bat in fury. This was a man who would not be easily satisfied with a run.

Trott’s career was characterised by strong starts. He opened for Warwickshire against a potent Sussex attack in 2003, making a century on his first-class debut. By lunch, he was 96 not out. In 2009, he made his Test debut at The Oval.

He gained recognition as a technically sound, temperamentally sound top-order batsman after his crucial role in England’s Ashes victory. Trott cemented his reputation with a double-century against Bangladesh at Lord’s and a superb 184 against a Pakistani side at the same ground, despite less spectacular tours to South Africa and Bangladesh that followed. Trott subsequently remarked that he thought the innings was his greatest since he defied Mohammed Amir and Mohammed Asif and helped save England from 102 for 7, even if the match was ultimately ruined by spot-fixing revelations.

Trott went on to make history by being instrumental in England’s 2010–11 Ashes victory in Australia, their first Test series victory in almost 25 years. He scored hundreds of runs in Adelaide and Melbourne, and the following summer, they defeated India in England to take the top spot in the rankings.  A stretch at the beginning of the following year, when Trott’s lowest score in 17 consecutive Test and ODI innings was 27, with two hundreds and six half-centuries, proved his amazing consistency despite a somewhat lean 2012, when he averaged 38.65.

Trott, who was born in Cape Town to a South African mother and a British father, competed for South Africa from the Under-15 to the Under-19 levels before moving on to the Boland and Western Province teams. It appeared that he would have a bright future in South Africa. Trott, however, was never content and always want more. Disinterested in continuing his education—he acknowledges that, in the psychology section of his exam for the Human Movement Science degree he dropped out of Stellenbosch University—he used his British passport and connections with Bob Woolmer, a Warwickshire and South African coach, to set up a trail in England.