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.”
But his ineligibility for the Blast means that Patel suddenly has time on his hands; last week, he used some of it to apply for the England national selector vacancy. “It was just a blasé thing,” he said, “where I rang Rob [Key] and said: ‘I’m twiddling my thumbs for a bit.’ He goes, ‘Well, why don’t you just apply for this role?’ “I said, ‘Alright, chuck me the form and I’ll apply for it.’”
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”.
