Not long ago, Jason Roy was at Legoland with his young family, when someone walked up to him and said: “Hey mate, thanks for the World Cup!”
“I was like, ‘Damn, yeah! You’re welcome!’,” says Roy, smiling. “It’s lovely to hear that.”
This is a reminder that not so long ago Roy was a major figure in English cricket. A broad-chested, brutal ball-striker, he was among the first, small band of players who could be labelled England greats without cracking Test cricket. Without him, England would not have won their first men’s 50-over World Cup, and not just because he threw to Jos Buttler to run out Martin Guptill. He was the standard-bearer of that team, and it was his return from injury that saved England from a mid-tournament wobble. His opening partnership with Jonny Bairstow was easily England’s greatest in white-ball cricket, both statistically and stylistically.
But seven years on, you would be forgiven for thinking Roy was long retired. His England career ended in “heartbreaking” fashion on the eve of the ugly World Cup defence of 2023. It took time for him to recover from that as he “fell out of love with cricket” and since then the 35-year-old has played with little fanfare and kept a low profile, enjoying being a busy father of three.
This winter, he played in Canada, the UAE, Nepal and Pakistan, and on Friday, he will turn out for Surrey in their T20 Blast opener against Lancashire. He first played in this tournament in 2008, aged 18, and has represented Surrey every summer since.
Talking on a bitterly cold spring morning on the pavilion balcony at the Oval, it is clear that Roy, once the ultimate alpha male, has mellowed. He is even having some of his tattoos lasered off. The sense is that Roy has plenty to say, but is desperate not to join the slew of disaffected England players moaning about their treatment. Speaking about the end of his career, he says: “I’m not that person to sit here and slag people off, and it is what it is. But it was a real shame and it affected me for a lot longer than I wanted it to.”
The beginning of the end for Roy was not long after his greatest triumph, the 2019 World Cup. “Covid, man,” he says, shaking his head. “It rocked me hard, mentally. You’re turning up to games and there is no crowd there. I get a huge feed off the crowd… Not socialising over however many days of hard isolation – it was like 50 or 60 days of hard hotel room isolation over five months, which is frightening. That rocked me. That rocked a lot of people, rocked the world. It was just crazy.
“I came out of it [Covid] looking forward but you’ve stayed at a level or gone backwards because you weren’t able to do what you needed to do physically.”
For two years from the summer of 2020, Roy struggled, which resulted in him being dropped for the victorious 2022 T20 World Cup. One-day internationals had always been his best format, but for three years after the 2019 World Cup, his only scores of more than 60 came in a run-fest in the Netherlands.
In early 2023, he turned a corner, making centuries in South Africa and Bangladesh, with the latter especially significant because he was never the most natural player of spin. That seemed to cement his World Cup spot. As it was, he played just one more match for England after making 132 in Dhaka.
The white-ball portion of the 2023 summer was saved for September, just before the World Cup in India. Before the ODI series against New Zealand, Roy was named in England’s World Cup squad, which was officially provisional but he was told was final. Harry Brook was overlooked but riding the crest of a wave, and Dawid Malan was the in-form spare batsman. Roy, meanwhile, was struggling with a back issue.
The last of four matches against New Zealand was on a Friday in mid-September. Roy felt he could have played, but was told not to risk the injury. On the Sunday, he received a call from the captain, his friend Buttler, to inform him that Brook would replace him in England’s final squad.
“I’ve not spoken about this much,” he says. “When I got dropped before the World Cup, it took a huge chunk out of me, mentally. It was something I was really looking forward to, had worked hard for, and I’d come out the back of some bad form and scored hundreds in the two series leading up to it. The back spasm came at a really bad time. The communication around that injury wasn’t great, and then I was dropped.
“It took a lot out of me as far as – who do I trust? You have played so many games for a team, and then suddenly… that is just the way it is. That is professional sport. It’s just the knock-on effect. I took myself away feeling pretty disheartened and gutted, all the feelings you get when dropped from a team. But it wasn’t just from the team, it was from the squad, for the World Cup.
“It feels like yesterday that I got that call from Jos. It’s not, it’s a long time ago now, but I’ve had to overcome a few things, so it’s gone very quickly.”
Roy struggled to watch the World Cup because he “couldn’t understand” what was happening to a once-great team. He had been told that he would receive a call informing him if he was in or out of the West Indies tour that followed, but it never came. “And then I saw on social media that the squads were out for the West Indies and I wasn’t in. No call had come. I thought, ‘Come on… that’s a bit…’” he says, before tailing off diplomatically.
Roy sought the management out. Having had the situation explained, he understood it. “That was a conversation we eventually had, just a bit late,” he says.
Roy’s axing after 185 matches for England left him “feeling like he couldn’t trust anyone”.
“You don’t want to sound ungrateful and entitled but it is a shame [it ended like that],” he says. “It didn’t feel right. The amount I played for England, what we had done as a squad. To just be shifted aside and not questioned again, that was the hard thing.”
Roy says he did not contemplate retiring and has picked himself up by reflecting on the good times. “I built myself up a little bit, but struggled to find that real desire because what was the point?” he says. “The mind is so powerful. You go through phases of loving it, moping around, and so on. That is detrimental to performance, to relationships. I started figuring things out when I threw myself back into competitions, trying to better other people, seeing them do well… The knock-on is that I am here training in seven degrees [celsius] loving every minute. It’s a funny old game.
“That four years, from when we first started [in 2015], were amazing. We didn’t know what we were going to achieve. We were all young and full of rubbish, trying our hand at this international cricket stuff, and it worked out really well. People really enjoyed watching us play and we loved the way we played our cricket. The impact it’s had on a few people is the most fulfilling thing I think.”
Now, Roy is keen to mentor youngsters wherever he plays, and has done coaching work in schools.
“I’ve been that person; I’ve been dropped, been at the top, had my struggles mentally, physically with injuries,” he says. “It’s definitely an avenue I’m keen to look at and I get a huge amount of fulfilment from.”
For now, though, Roy is still playing for Surrey and MI London, who picked him up at base price in the Hundred auction, this summer.
“Hopefully we can bring back the mid-2018 JRoy – that would be nice, wouldn’t it?” he laughs. “Back end of the 2019 World Cup, that guy. Hopefully we see snippets of him again. He’s certainly wanting to come out.”