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If you can’t beat them, join them. Samit Patel’s 60-cap international career was littered with run-ins with England selectors, but after announcing his retirement from English domestic cricket on Friday following an ECB ban, he has revealed that he has applied to become one – and, failing that, that he wants to work with Trent Rockets’ coaching staff during the Hundred this year.
Patel, who spent the last two seasons at Derbyshire after a long association with Nottinghamshire, had spoken to several counties about the prospect of a new deal to play a 24th consecutive season of English T20 cricket. But he learned last week that his participation in a ‘legends’ league earlier this year had rendered him ineligible; at 41, that effectively ended his county career.
He was frustrated by the ECB’s ruling but is now resigned to it, and has conceded that he should have checked whether the league – the ‘World Legends Pro T20’ in Goa – was sanctioned before signing up to play. Even after his county retirement, he will continue to play club cricket on Saturdays for Hoylandswaine CC in the Huddersfield Premier League, and perhaps on the franchise circuit, too.
“I love playing cricket. It’s a passion,” Patel said at Trent Bridge on Friday, after confirming that his days as a county cricketer are over. He also has ambitions to play a third or fourth XI game in the same team as his 12-year-old son Rahil who takes after his father as a right-handed batter and left-arm spinner. “He plays for Notts and plays at Trent College… He’s growing up pretty fast.”
He considers himself an outside bet for the role – “I’d be surprised if I got it” – but in what is expected to be a relatively sparse field, he makes for an intriguing candidate, not least because of his own experiences with selectors. He was chastised by Geoff Miller – primarily about his fitness – throughout his England career and believes he could, and should, have played more international cricket than he did.
While he could never quite convince England that he was fit enough to hold down a regular spot, Patel’s longevity is undeniable. Between his debut for Notts as a teenager in 2002 and his final match for Northern Superchargers last summer, he managed 913 professional appearances, and hardly missed a game through injury. He also holds the rare distinction of winning trophies in five different formats of English domestic cricket: four-day, 50-over, 40-over, T20 and the Hundred.
Patel insisted he has “absolutely no regrets” but a pair of minor, lingering grievances came up in the course of an engaging half-hour conversation. One, that he never played a home Test, believing that he could have thrived at No. 6 but was pigeon-holed as a subcontinent specialist. And two, that he never featured in the IPL, with his ambitions thwarted by the ECB’s hawkish stance in the tournament’s early years.
He described his career as a “great rollercoaster” and that he had “seen it all” across more than two decades in the game. Take his first winter as an England player, for example: it started with the infamous Stanford 20/20 for $20 million in Antigua, continued to India where a one-day series was interrupted due to the Mumbai terror attacks, and ended with Kevin Pietersen describing him as “unfit, fat and lazy”.
It was a different time, and Patel saw that criticism as a mark of Pietersen’s respect for his talent. “I love Kev,” he said. “We had a good relationship, to be honest. We still do now… He spoke the way he spoke because he knew there was a player there. He picked me first in 2008 when he was skipper. He made some bold calls: he played me in front of Swanny [Graeme Swann].”
Pietersen, who first played with Patel at Nottinghamshire, was later instrumental in the highlight of his international career: England’s 2-1 Test series win in India in 2012-13. Patel played the first three Tests before he was left out for the fourth, enabling a 21-year-old Joe Root to make his debut, and believes that a “massive team meeting” at 1-0 down in Ahmedabad changed the course of the series.
“We had a few beers after that Test match, and we said we would never let India dictate a game of cricket again,” Patel said. “[Virender] Sehwag got a hundred just after lunch and we were gone. Everyone had written us off… KP said, ‘Right, if we go down, we’ll go down swinging’ and before you knew it, the whole mindset had changed… It was driven by Kev.
“We bowled India out [in Mumbai], we had a massive lead, and it was the KP and [Alastair] Cook show. Monty [Panesar] bowled like a genius, and Swanny. I only bowled four overs in the whole Test match and it was an absolute dustbowl! I couldn’t get the ball out of Monty’s hand. And the rest is history… After we’d been drubbed in so many ODI series over there, that was so satisfying to beat India in India.”
It was a victory masterminded by Andy Flower as head coach, whom Patel later worked under at Trent Rockets in the Hundred. His other favourite mentor, Peter Moores, has since replaced Flower at the Rockets, and Patel wants to work alongside him as he considers a future in coaching: “I’d love to help in the Hundred. Trent Bridge will always be home to me… I think I can add value to a team.”
Not that Patel always paid much heed to his own coaches. “I was pretty shrewd, because I didn’t listen,” he said. “Mick [Newell] would back that up. In my head, I wanted to play a certain way, and nobody was getting in my way. I’d acknowledge it and say ‘yeah’ but I wouldn’t listen to it… If I got out, then I’d get the repercussions, but I’d be cool with that because at least I did it my way.”
One other career highlight jumps out to Patel: his glorious 2017 summer, where he played a major role in Nottinghamshire’s charge to a 50-over and T20 double and hit back-to-back Championship double-hundreds as they won promotion from Division Two: “That was a team of diamonds… You’d do well to top that team.”
One win stood out above the rest: chasing down 371 to win a 50-over semi-final at Chelmsford. “All the Essex boys had gone home at half-time to get their going-out gears,” he recalled with a smile. “I got my helmet, got my gloves, and said to Mooresy, ‘Leave this one with me.'” Patel put on 185 with man-of-the-match Steven Mullaney, and hit the winning runs with three balls to spare.
The losing side that day included his old mate Ravi Bopara, the only other man to have featured in every season of English T20 cricket to date. They caught up on the phone this week as they drew a line under long and successful county careers.
“One thing that we always prided ourselves on [was that] we stayed up with the youngsters. Hopefully, we’ve entertained… If someone had said I’d play for 25 years, I’d have snapped your hand off for half of that. Everything has to come to an end.”
Matt Roller is a senior correspondent at ESPNcricinfo. @mroller98
