DARREN STEVENS
It was great to see my old team Kent hold out for a draw in the Battle of the Bridge last weekend at Chelmsford, and in particular to see 18-year-old Jaydn Denly play a match-saving knock of 41 off 128 balls when it looked for all the world that Essex were heading to their second win of the new campaign. Picking Joe’s nephew was a good piece of selection by Kent because he had just scored a hundred to win a Second XI match on a dry pitch at Beckenham.
It was no mean feat to deny Simon Harmer and Matt Critchley on a turning fourth-day pitch. Even at such a young age, Jaydn looks like he’s not far off figuring out the game and he’s also a jet fielder, strutting around in his sunnies just like his uncle Joe. He’s got a huge future in all forms of cricket.
As local rivals, there’s invariably a bit of needle between Essex and Kent. It always felt like a different game to any other when we went to Chelmsford.
Normally you would play on the near side close to the changing rooms, with the crowd right on top of you. It feels like you’re in a bowl – very different to Canterbury, where the field is big and the ground spreads out.
We’d always have a good moan about the pitches they prepared at Essex. For many years they had Pakistan leggie Danish Kaneria, much like they have Harmer now, and typically it would be turning square from day one.
There was always something going on with that pitch. In 2012 we got put in on a fresh green one and left-arm seamer Charl Willoughby had us 9 for 5 before the rain came down for two days. We turned up on the third morning and the wicket was as white as my cottage (which is called White Cottage). You couldn’t believe it was the same pitch. I ended up with a hundred, Geraint Jones got 80-odd and the match was drawn.
That Chelmsford crowd is brutal. For Championship cricket, one-day cricket, but most of all for T20 cricket. There was a televised T20 we played there in 2011, the last game of the group phase in which Essex had to win to make the knockouts. Ravi Bopara bowled one at me which I inadvertently top-edged to Scott Styris at third man.
I couldn’t see where the ball had ended up, only Styris on the floor and then jumping up to celebrate. He gave me the thumbs up to say he’d taken a clean catch, so I started walking off, only for one of the umpires to ask me if I thought the ball had carried. I hadn’t seen it clearly, so the umpire said he’d have it checked. Turns out the ball bounced just before Styris got his hands under it. So, much to the chagrin of the partisan crowd, I turned round and went on to score a few before taking four wickets to close out the game and eliminate our rivals.
Within a few days of the game I’d received dozens of hate mails from Essex fans, and it’s safe to say that from then on I was hardly a crowd favour
