Kent Cricket 2026

Cook on the Metro comp:

With the school Summer Holidays now upon us, our attention at a Men’s first-team level now shifts to the start of the Men’s Metro Bank One Day Cup.

It’s important to put this competition into context. Sam Billings, Zak Crawley & Tawanda Muyeye will be away in The Hundred, we have a lot of talented prospects now making the step up to the first-team environment, and we have only a limited amount of Second XI fixtures remaining in the 2026 schedule.

As with all competitions, our biggest ambition is to win this tournament. That being said, over the past few years we have also used the One Day Cup to give opportunities to younger players, which in the long-term will benefit their journey into becoming established first-team players.

With that in mind, there will no doubt be a few big calls to make in terms of team selection in our four home and four away matches.

We know that at times, some of our historic selection policies in the One Day Cup have been slightly polarising for our Members and supporters, but every decision we make at this point of the Summer will always have one eye on the future and our long-term strategy of having a competitive Kent side predominantly produced in the county.

Firstly, I can confirm that our Club Captain, Daniel Bell-Drummond, will continue his captaincy in the One Day Cup. Deebs is a fantastic leader, and it’ll be experienced players like him that will help guide emerging players through their journey into the first-team.

He has a great one-day pedigree and will provide us with experience at the top of the order, potentially around some of our younger batters. He has, of course, also come through our Talent Pathway up to first-team level.

We can also draw on the experience of the likes of Sam Northeast, Ben Compton, Matt Quinn, Grant Stewart, and the other more established first-team squad members.

This does not guarantee their selection, but it does mean that they will be around the group to give insight and a bit of mentoring throughout the tournament to what we believe is the backbone of the next generation of our first-team.

They will all be in and around the squad with our young core of players that people have associated with the One Day Cup over the past couple of seasons. Olly Curtiss, an exciting young all-rounder with big-hitting capabilities, made his debut in this tournament last year, and our young homegrown players with youth international experience, Jaydn Denly & Ekansh Singh, both debuted in the first-team in the One Day Cup in the past couple of years.

Ben Dawkins also raised his profile considerably last year with 111 not out away at the Northamptonshire Steelbacks.

In terms of Overseas Players, Keith Dudgeon will be available for selection for the whole tournament. However, as is the case with Matt Milnes, both have had high workloads at the front end of this season in both the Rothesay County Championship and Vitality Blast, and we need to make sure that they will be fit and firing for the end of the Championship season.

This will again provide opportunities. Corey Flintoff also stepped up to first-team level in the One Day Cup last Summer, and Jas Singh will have an opportunity to kick-on again in one-day competition.

South African all-rounder Senuran Muthusamy is set to arrive in Kent from 1 August, and he is a big part of our plans for the run-in of the County Championship.

He arrives slightly later than planned as Cricket South Africa managed his return from a knee injury, and at this stage, we don’t want to rush Sen into action in the One Day Cup.

There may be time for him to get up to match fitness in this tournament, but our priority with him is the County Championship.

This week, we travel to Sprowston CC to take on Norfolk in our NCCA Showcase 50-Over fixture. We will take a squad with one eye on our first One Day Cup fixture at the St Lawrence Ground on Friday, meaning that we will be continuing to manage the workloads of several key components of our 50-Over squad after an intense part of our Summer schedule.

We anticipate that the squad of Friday’s home opener will be different to the side that faces Norfolk, but again, this Wednesday’s match in Sprowston will give players the opportunity to impress.

Thank you in advance for your support during the Metro Bank One Day Cup.

Cookie

Addick Addict said:

Sam Billings hit 80 off 40 balls captaining the 2s against Notts today. Finch 22 (12) and Joe Denly 12 (11) are also in the side.

Also playing for Kent is George O'Connor who is very good friends with Seb from their time at the DLCA and Notts have Josh Croom who was also in their cohort. Both are seamers and played first Grade for two or three years in Adelaide. 

killerandflash said:

Addick Addict said:

Kent have a 50 over warm-up game against Norfolk tomorrow. Squad below but, as stated above, this won't fully reflect the one for our opener in the Metro on Friday:

Isn't that Dawkins,  who's not in the squad?