45-year-old stars with bat and ball after missing quarter-final, to make point to team-mates
Matt Roller18-Sep-2021The decision to schedule T20 Blast Finals Day more than three weeks after the quarter-finals has robbed the tournament of most of its star overseas players and Kent were no different to the rest. They retained the services of Qais Ahmad, the Afghan legspinner, but were without the spearhead of their pace attack in Adam Milne, long since departed to the UAE ahead of the IPL’s imminent resumption to fulfil his contract with Mumbai Indians.But Milne’s absence opened the door for county cricket’s cult hero to return to their side after his omission for Kent’s quarter-final win against Birmingham Bears. “It’s a like-for-like replacement,” grinned Sam Billings, confirming at the toss that Darren Stevens, their 45-year-old Grand Old Man, had been recalled to their middle order, with Alex Blake also missing through injury.Stevens’ T20 career was as good as over two years ago. Faced with the prospect of sitting in Kent’s dug-out for the second season in a row, Stevens went on loan to Derbyshire for the 2019 Blast but after four underwhelming appearances in the group stage, he found himself running drinks. They made it to Finals Day but opted to pick Anuj Dal as a non-bowling No. 6 ahead of him; Dal was out first ball in a heavy defeat to Essex as Stevens watched on in a fluorescent bib. Kent left him out again through the 2020 season despite his efforts to force his way into the side, and it was unpalatable for another county to consider signing a veteran allrounder bowling medium-paced cutters on loan, limiting opportunities for their own young players in the process.Meanwhile, Stevens was busy telling anyone who would listen – and plenty who wouldn’t – that he felt hard done by. “I feel over the last few years that I’m gutted not to have played and feel like I could have made a massive impact in some of the quarter-finals we’ve lost or the games leading up to that,” he told the podcast last year.”I was at every training session making a point that I’m still smacking it out the ground and can still bowl well enough and am still diving around in the field better than these 22-year-olds. I want to play and I made it clear, but for some reason my mate Billings was like ‘well, we’re going young’. In a way I get it, but in a way I don’t. That’s my big thing: I want to win trophies.”With the teams I’ve played in at Kent, I feel like only winning one trophy is criminal. Even in the last few years I’ve been biting at the bit to play Twenty20 cricket and I’ve felt like they’ve missed me in the middle of the innings. They’ve got this thing in their head ‘well, we’re going to go young because we’ve got to give them a chance to do well’. You’ve still got to pick the best side to win the game or the competition.”
Darren Stevens and Archie Lenham – the oldest and youngest ever cricketers to play on #FinalsDay! https://t.co/VnD2brv4vf | #Blast21 pic.twitter.com/mN1I7o7ZBp
— ESPNcricinfo (@ESPNcricinfo) September 18, 2021