Somerset’s 18-year-old wicketkeeper-batter Thomas Rew has been named in England’s T20I squad for the white-ball tour of Australia, replacing Jos Buttler, who is out following hamstring surgery, a call-up that arrived a day after Rew signed his first ECB development contract and appears to move him ahead of his older brother James in England’s wicketkeeping plans, a rare sibling subplot within a single national squad announcement that immediately drew attention from English cricket writers more used to covering straightforward injury replacements.
A rapid rise through the pathway
Rew’s route to a senior call-up has moved quickly: he was selected for the England Lions tour of Australia last year, scoring a half-century for the Lions against the senior side in their only Ashes warm-up fixture, then captained England’s Under-19s at this year’s World Cup, scoring a century in the semi-final against Australia. He also signed with Paarl Royals for the SA20, though he did not play a match for the franchise, gaining exposure to a professional franchise environment even without a competitive outing to show for it.
County form that forced the issue
Despite missing the early part of the county season for school exams, Rew returned to make an unbeaten century in just his second Championship match of the campaign, 127 off 151 balls, which included a 58-run partnership with brother James, before following it with a second century in his next match. That run of form in first-class cricket, allied to his white-ball pedigree, made him difficult for selectors to overlook once Buttler’s injury opened a squad vacancy, with national selectors reportedly tracking his scores closely through the back half of the county season.
A brother overtaken
James Rew, the elder of the two, became the youngest English player to score ten first-class centuries since Denis Compton, and deputised for Jamie Smith behind the stumps during a Test at The Oval this summer while Smith was on paternity leave, managing scores of 24 and 15 alongside some wicketkeeping errors. He has not featured in an England squad since that Test, and Thomas’s call-up now suggests the younger brother has moved ahead of him in the selectors’ thinking for white-ball cricket specifically, even as James continues to build a case in the red-ball game at county level.
Context: a squad in transition
Thomas’s selection comes as part of a touring squad captained across both the ODI and T20I legs by Harry Brook, with Phil Salt and Jacob Bethell also returning from injury layoffs, while frontline bowlers Jofra Archer, Gus Atkinson, Sonny Baker and Josh Tongue have been rested from the T20I series specifically. Fast bowler Eddie Jack also received his first international call-up in the same squad announcement, underlining a broader generational shift taking place across England’s white-ball set-up this tour, with several uncapped names entering the fold at once rather than in isolation.
Two ways to see the sibling story
Some within English cricket will view Thomas’s rapid promotion as a natural result of simply being in better form and more white-ball ready at the moment selectors needed a replacement for Buttler, with no deeper implication for James’s long-term prospects in red-ball cricket specifically. Others will see it as a pointed signal that James’s underwhelming deputising stint at The Oval has genuinely cost him ground, with a younger, white-ball-oriented keeper now the more obvious long-term succession option behind Jamie Smith across all three formats.
What’s next
The three-match ODI series precedes the T20Is, which begin November 21, giving Rew a near-immediate opportunity to make his senior international debut on Australian soil. How he performs is likely to shape not just his own immediate future but the broader three-way wicketkeeping conversation involving himself, his brother and incumbent Jamie Smith heading into England’s next assignments, with selectors expected to revisit the pecking order again before the next home summer, a timeline that could well include further squad changes once Buttler himself returns to full fitness. Somerset’s coaching staff, who have overseen both brothers’ development since their junior years at the club, have been careful in public comments to credit the production line the county has built around its age-group and second-team structures, rather than framing the moment solely as one sibling overtaking another on the way to senior honours.
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