A bustling allrounder who studied at Cardiff Met after spending his teenage years in the Surrey Academy, Dan Douthwaite felt the benefits of performing against counties first-hand at the start of the 2019 season. A maiden first-class hundred against Sussex followed by 95 and two wickets in a friendly against Glamorgan earned him a contract at Sophia Gardens, and he soon proved his worth with an unbeaten 52 from 35 balls - again against Sussex - in a run chase of 348 in a televised 50-over game.

As a 15-year-old, Douthwaite made history by hitting the fastest-ever hundred in English Schools Cricket - a 31-ball ton for Reed's School in a 35-over game. He made a List A debut for Warwickshire against West Indies A in 2018, and was selected by the MCC for a triangular tournament against Netherlands and Nepal later in the summer, but it was not until 2019 that he really made his breakthrough.

His wicket-to-wicket medium-fast bowling and handy lower-middle order batting made him a regular for Glamorgan in all formats, and demonstrated that the club had done well to secure his services on a long-term deal when several other counties had been interested. He briefly went semi-viral in the 2018-19 winter, via a video of him collapsing after reverse-ramping a ball into his grille in the Cardiff MCCU nets which was shared widely on Twitter.

ESPNcricinfo staff