Kent Cricket 2025

killerandflash said:

Addick Addict said:

Following Stewart's injury, now Quinn has joined him.

Matthew Fleming and Martin McCague will be opening the bowling for us in the next game.

I recently spoke to Martin McCague at a club game. Suffice to say I very much doubt that he will be coming off his long run up. 

FremlinsFellow said:

Lots of positives for Kent yesterday with the young players taking centre stage and offering hope of better days ahead for Kent’s supporters.

Like some other fans I had failed to notice Quinn leave the field and so I was bemused by the bowling choices until I realised Compton was now fielding for the unfortunate Kent bowler. It must be disheartening for Quinn to be plagued by so many injuries and he had bowled a good opening spell too. 

Dawkins batted with real aggression in the opening power play and Jaydn Denly made the most of his opportunity too after being put down early on - the Lancashire wicketkeeper did not enjoy the best of days with a bad drop, some over enthusiastic appealing repeatedly turned down by the umpire and then a second ball duck. 

It was encouraging to see so many families and children in the ground. The sunshine probably helped but the pricing worked too.

I have a couple of stories relating to Kent v Lancs age group matches, one of which dates back some 10 years or so and involves that keeper who appeared to appeal for everything and anything, sometimes unilaterally, regardless of the fact that he knew that there was zero chance of a decision being given in their favour. 

Every year King's College, Somerset (Jos Buttler, Tom Banton and the Rew brothers' school) hold week long county age group festivals over the course of the summer. My son, Seb, was representing Kent U11s against Lancashire in a match that also has a trophy in itself which is a celebration of a match dating back to when Rob Key and Freddie Flintoff were the respective skippers.

Seb was batting, let a wide one go and watched the ball sail into the keeper's gloves standing back. The very keeper who was so vociferous yesterday, thinking that Seb might be out of his ground, rolled the ball at the stumps and hit them though Seb hadn't moved at any point. The square leg umpire wasn't watching but looking at his counter, lifted his head on hearing the "death rattle" of the ball hitting the stumps and the bails falling off. And immediately raised his finger. Elephants like me never forget but, equally, will always embrace karma such as yesterday especially when a player does little to enhance his reputation. 

A few years later, when the lads were aged 14, there was another such incident in a match between the same teams, albeit not involving this keeper. Kent's opening batter, who was very tall for his age and approaching 6 foot, was given out LBW trying to pull a ball off the front foot with the ball looking like it would have been going over the stumps. The trigger happy umpire hadn't even waited for the mandatory three second count. Unfortunately for him, the batter's mother would religiously record his innings so that she, her husband and their son could analyse it later and at lunch she came storming over to the umpire to show him her footage - of the ball hitting her son at the top of his thigh pad!     

I am a qualified umpire and have regularly officiated in Kent League matches and will always defend them because it is such a difficult job especially without the benefit of a "third umpire" and players thinking that they know more about the Laws of the Game than they do. That said, it always seemed that, in the four years of going to that Festival, some of those gentlemen seemed to have been wheeled straight out of the local home for retired umpires for the week!

Missing from action for the Middlesex game:

Crawley - elsewhere
Muyeye - elsewhere
Billings - elsewhere
Stewart - hamstring injury
Quinn - groin injury
DBD - knee injury
Joe - calf injury
Curtiss - at the Super 4s captaining London & South East
Jas - ankle injury
Gilchrist - on loan at Middlesex but won't be allowed to play against us
Compton - not selected "as Dawkins & Denly continue to transition into first-team cricket during the Metro Bank One Day Cup"
O'Riordan - not selected

Which leaves our match day 13 man squad of:

Regarding Compton I can actually see the reasons for leaving him out. If we don't give the three England U19s a chance to grow and improve in this competition themselves when are we going to do it? Those boys have to see a pathway and we need these players to feel very much part of the first team squad and not emergency bit parts. Dawkins' current contract is only for the Metro Cup. 

Imagine one or two of them walking away at the end of their short term contracts because they didn't get a chance with us. It would be Ollie Robinson all over again and rightly we would be screaming at to how we allowed this to happen. Unlike Robinson, though, he didn't leave with 17 other counties in a better position than us which is the situation, unfortunately, we find ourselves in.