Revealed: the young Jews in position for English cricket stardom

Last summer Feldman was spotted by the Middlesex scouts playing for Ealing Men’s First XI and was invited for a trial with the Middlesex U18 team. This summer, while revising for A Levels, he made his debut, aged just 17, for Middlesex Second XI. In mid-July Middlesex gave him a rookie contract. In August he made his debut for the Middlesex First XI, in the T20 Vitality Blast match against Glamorgan in Cardiff, dismissing Glamorgan’s two highest scorers. He showed calm under pressure when taking 2-36 in Middlesex’s Metro Bank One-Day Cup victory over Sussex at Lord’s. And earlier this month, in a sign of the remarkable impact he has made in such a short time and at such a young age, Feldman made his international debut for England U19 in a Youth ODI against Ireland at Loughborough. And against Bangladesh U19s at Bristol a week ago he was the best of the England bowlers.

“This has been a really exciting summer for me playing for Middlesex and new England U19s”, Feldman told the JC. “I am extremely grateful for the opportunity I have been given.”

Another exciting prospect for full international honours is the batting all-rounder Noah Thain, who aged 20 has been playing his first full season in the Essex First XI.

“I don’t want to build them up too much”, Essex captain Tom Westley writes the latest issue of Wisden Cricket Monthly, “but Charlie Allison, together with Noah Thain and Luc Benkenstein, have the potential and talent to be generational cricketers for the club. No pressure, lads!”

Born and brought up in Cambridge, Thain played cricket as a child in the back garden with his elder brother Sam, who was selected for the British team for this summer’s (subsequently cancelled) Maccabiah Games. His younger brother Reuben, a batter, is in the Essex County Cricket Academy.

Noah Thain of England during the 1st Youth ODI match between England U19's and Sri Lanka U19's (Photo by David Rogers - ECB/ECB via Getty Images)ECB via Getty Images

In 2022 Noah played a remarkable innings of 293 (with 40 fours and 9 sixes) for Essex U18s against Kent at Garon Park. In 2023, aged just 18 he made his first-class debut for Essex against Ireland. Thain went on to play 25 one-day internationals and four Tests for England at U19 level, with a top score of 88 against Bangladesh.

Another Jewish former England U19 player who is now a regular in county cricket is Ethan Bamber. His parents – David Bamber and Julia Swift – and maternal grandparents, David Swift and Paula Jacobs, both born into Jewish families in Liverpool, were all actors, as was his great-uncle Clive Swift (of Keeping Up Appearances fame).

After attending Mill Hill School, Ethan made his debut for Middlesex in 2018 aged 19, while studying Theology at Exeter University. “Personally, I’m not religious in any sense, but I’ve always been interested in why people believe so strongly in something,” he said at the time. Skippered by England’s current ODI captain Harry Brook, Bamber was England’s joint top wicket-taker at the 2018 U19 Cricket World Cup in New Zealand. He took 52 wickets (average 20.84) in 2021 and was capped by Middlesex the following year. This season he joined Warwickshire, for whom against Essex he scored his maiden first-class century (107) - and then dismissed Noah Thain!

The fourth Jew currently playing regular county cricket is Michael Cohen, a South African-born fast left-arm bowler with a French passport who made his debut for Western Province aged 18 in 2016 and after playing three seasons for Derbyshire is now in the Kent one-day and county championship team.

And it is not just Jewish men who are leaving their mark on the English game. This summer, Jacqui Sanitt became perhaps the first Jewish female Cricket Blue, playing in the Oxford team which defeated Cambridge at Lord’s (T20) and Arundel (50 overs). A wicketkeeper/batter, she went to South Hampstead High School – the school attended almost 100 years earlier by Netta Rheinberg, the only Jewish person to have played Test cricket for England.

One of the most exciting opening bats in world cricket is the Netherlands’ Michael Levitt. Born in Cape Town, Levitt attended Herzlia Constantia High School in Cape Town until he was 10. Aged 18 he played for Stanmore in the Middlesex Premier League, sharing several lengthy partnerships with the Glamorgan all-rounder Steve Reingold. After the Dutch head coach found out Levitt had a Dutch passport, he started to play for Voorburg Cricket Club – and then the Netherlands. Last February, in a T20 against Namibia he scored 135 off just 62 balls, with 10 sixes and 11 fours – the highest score by a Dutchman in T20s.

Michael Levitt (Image: M Levitt)[Missing Credit]

This summer Levitt enjoyed touring Scotland, as his father had been born in Edinburgh to a Jewish family before moving to Cape Town at the age of 6. “It was really nice to see where my dad grew up and my grandfather spent most of his life”, Levitt says. “When I play Scotland, I always get a comment from my dad such as ‘Don’t do too well!’ Ignoring that imprecation, in June Levitt’s explosive 90 off 57 balls doomed Scotland to a 17-run defeat. He is likely to be a danger man at the T20 World Cup early next year.

Two other South African-born Jewish wicket-keeper batsmen to look out for are Gavin Kaplan and Daniel Da Costa. Kaplan, who averages over 40 in first-class cricket, scored 173 last year for Western Province, and now plays for Boland – and, with great success, for Voorburg, as an overseas pro. Da Costa, who plays as a professional for Carlton Cricket Club in the Scottish Premier League, will qualify for Scotland next January.

Jews are also contributing mightily to the administration of cricket off the field. This year has seen the appointment of Todd Greenberg, previously the CEO of the players’ union the Australian Cricketers’ Association, as CEO of Cricket Australia (replacing his co-religionist Nick Hockley), Robert Lawson, whose father came to the UK from Berlin on the Kindertransport in June 1939, as Chief Executive and Secretary of the MCC, and Lord Grabiner KC as President of Surrey CCC.

It is, however, a sad vindication of the time in which we live that not all current Jewish cricketers were comfortable with my including them in this article. Present today is the same fear of antisemitism which decades ago caused South African batter Fred Susskind to ensure that, as South African fast bowler Norman Gordon told me, “the South African papers never mentioned he was Jewish” and which motivated Sid O’Linn (born Sydney Olinsky, the son of a kosher butcher) to pass himself off as a non-Jew of seemingly Irish, rather than Jewish origin.

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Daniel Lightman is a King’s Counsel. He is the co-curator, with Zaki Cooper, of the exhibition on the Jewish Community and Cricket which will remain in the MCC Museum, Lord’s, until early 2026