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World Cup winner James Vince will step down as Hampshire captain after a decade in charge and move to Dubai following attacks on his family home, English county cricket announced on Wednesday.
Although he will miss the English National First-Class County Championship or the 2025 red-ball season, Vince will continue to play white-ball (limited-overs) cricket and skipper Hampshire in the T20 Blast.
The 33-year-old batsman, a member of the England team that won the 2019 50-over World Cup on home soil, saw his family home near the Hampshire headquarters attacked twice last year.
Vince, who said the incidents had left his young family fearing for their safety, told Britain’s Daily Telegraph in July that he believed the attacks were a case of mistaken identity.
“James Vince has signed a final year review of his contract which fulfills his obligation to play for the Hampshire Hawks in the 2025 Vitality Blast campaign and confirms he has no plans to play red-ball cricket this year,” a Hampshire release said. .
“After 10 consecutive years as club captain, Vince will also step down from this position but will remain captain of the Hampshire Hawks team.
“In 2024, Vince went through a difficult year on a personal level, following several attacks on the family home. As a result, the family made the decision to move to Dubai.”
Vince added that he had to “understand what’s best for my family and combine that with where I’m at in my career.”
He made his Hampshire debut in 2009 at the age of 18 and has scored over 22,000 points for the county. Vince is the Blast’s all-time leading scorer and has played in all three of Hampshire’s winning T20 teams, while representing England 55 times across all formats.
Vince was also retained by Karachi Kings for this season’s Pakistan Super League T20 on a deal worth £100,000 ($122,000).
The PSL made a one-off move from its usual February-March slot to take place between April 8 and May 19, at the same time as the first half of the departmental championship.
English cricket chiefs have introduced rules preventing players contracted to England or red-ball county players from appearing in foreign leagues such as the PSL which run during the English season, with the exception of the Indian Premier League, cricket’s richest T20 franchise tournament.
But the policy appears to have helped persuade Vince, who won the last of his 13 Test caps in 2018, to abandon English first-class cricket, at least temporarily, rather than reject a lucrative PSL deal.
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