As Samit Patel limbers-up for the 20th T20 campaign of his Notts Outlaws career, the green and gold stalwart has reflected with irony upon his ignominious beginnings in the format.
The all-rounder, who is one of only five participants in the tournament’s inaugural year in 2003 who are still playing, will feature for the Green and Golds in their tournament opener against Worcestershire Rapids on Friday (6.30pm) at Trent Bridge. As the two-decade landmark approaches, the 37-year-old has comically recalled how the first time he bowled in the format didn’t exactly go to plan.
“The first ball was a no-ball and got hit for six,” he recalls, ruefully. “The second one went for six too. So, I had gone for 14 from one ball. It didn’t go down too well. I was still at school and it was on Sky, so everyone was watching - and that happened! On the basis of that, who would have thought I’d still be playing now?”
Yet Nottinghamshire didn’t hold it against him. The opening match of the 2022 Vitality Blast programme against Worcestershire at Trent Bridge on Friday is set to be Patel’s 207th in an Outlaws’ shirt. It took Patel until his fifth match to claim a first wicket, but since then there has been no looking back and he goes into the new campaign with 181 wickets for the county. He won 18 England caps in the format as well, in addition to his 36 one-day internationals and six Test match appearances.
Now a T20 specialist playing tournaments around the world, last season he became the first English player to complete the double of 250 wickets and 5,000 runs in domestic matches in the format. With the ball, Patel can boast of an achievement unparalleled in Blast history, his spell of three wickets for four runs in the corresponding fixture against the Rapids in 2021 entering the record books as the most economical four-over spell the competition has seen.
Having signed a new two-year contract during the build-up to this year’s competition, the two-time T20 trophy winner insists that he’s far from finished.
“At present I’m looking at another three seasons,” he says. “I’m hoping to get another couple of trophies in the bank as well. We always set out to play entertaining cricket and that’s the way all teams should look at it because that’s what the crowds want to see.
“From a personal point of view, it’s why I play. I play for the crowd and I play off the crowd a little bit too. The atmosphere on big nights at Trent Bridge is up there with the best grounds in the world, in my opinion, and we try to respond by turning it into a fortress.
“We always get good crowds here and that’s because we play a brand of cricket that attracts it and because it’s a special place to play and watch cricket. To have played for 20 years is pretty special, and the skills on show during that period have got better and better.
“We’ve got a good squad, with a lot of depth, we’ll be giving it everything to make it through to Finals Day again and we definitely believe we’ve got the players to win the trophy.”
Notts Outlaws will be in Vitality Blast action at Trent Bridge on seven occasions this summer, starting with the fixture against Worcestershire Rapids with a 6.30pm start on Friday evening.
Tickets are available via tickets.trentbridge.co.uk.
