The Second Test between England and New Zealand, starting on 10 June at Edgbaston, featured two capped Kent cricketers. Nothing particularly unusual about that you may think, but the two players in question, Zak Crawley and Matt Henry, were on opposite sides. On day one, Matt Henry’s team had much the better of the play, and Zak suffered the ignominy of a duck (which, to look on the bright side, was only four runs fewer than Joe Root made). My first thought was that this must be a pretty rare occurrence, so my second thought was let’s see how often it has happened before.
The answer to my probably not entirely comprehensive searches is that it is not as rare an event as I had imagined, and the previous example of two capped Kent players playing for the opposite sides in a Test was barely 18 months ago. The location was Hamilton in New Zealand, in the second of their two-Test series with England. The New Zealand player was once again Matt Henry, England fielded two players, Zak Crawley on debut and Joe Denly. The Test was drawn, but Matt Henry won the battle of Kent, getting Joe caught behind for 4. Zak made just a single, but it was Wagner rather than Henry who dismissed him, just as it has been at Edgbaston.
Thanks to the short-sighted policies of several England selectors, we have to go back a further ten years to find another instance of a Kent and England player facing a capped county colleague in a Test match. I suppose I should add at this point that there have been many instances of two capped overseas Kent players playing Tests against each other, with the most frequent example probably being Rahul Dravid v Muttiah Muralitharan in many Tests between India and Sri Lanka, but I am more interested in Kent players who represented England. Also, limiting my research to that saves a lot of time.
Before the Hamilton instance in December 2019, the previous England Test which featured Kent players on both sides was the Fifth Test in Port-of-Spain against West Indies in March 2009. The match was what village cricketers would call a winning draw for England, and it was the only Test appearance for Amjad Khan, who bowled 25 overs and took 1 for 111 in West Indies’ first innings, while one of three West Indian century makers in that innings was Brendon Nash. Amjad did not bat in either innings, and took 0 for 11 in 4 overs second time around, as Swann, Panesar and Anderson almost won the game for England.
Going back a bit further, we find Geraint Jones playing against Andrew Symonds in Australia in the Third Test in Perth on the 2006/07 series. After that match, Jones lost his Test place to Chris Read for the rest of the series. Just before that, Geraint and Murali had been on opposite sides for the entire three Test series in 2006. The series was drawn 1-1 with one draw. Of the 37 England wickets that fell to bowlers in the series, Murali took 24, and Geraint dismissed 17 Sri Lankan batsmen. So Kent caps did a lot to shape the series.
Clearly there have been many instances of Kent and England players facing up to county team-mates in the Test arena, but the first instance of this was just over 52 years ago, in Lahore. England fielded no fewer than three Kent cricketers – Colin Cowdrey as captain, Alan Knott keeping wicket and his partner in crime Derek Underwood. Not just three Kent cricketers, but three great Kent cricketers. Facing up to them was one of our very best overseas players, and one of the very nicest guys on and off the cricket field, Asif Iqbal. This was not a happy tour, and all three matches ended in draws, and what were described as ‘minor riots and skirmishes’. In the Lahore Test, Pakistan chose Aftab Gul to open the batting, largely because major riots and strikes had been threatened if he was not selected. Gul was a student activist at the time, and it was rumoured that even though he was on bail, accused of various political activities including storing a nuclear warhead in his garage, the selectors felt they could not pick a team for Lahore without him. I have no idea whether all these allegations are true, but they have been repeated many times over the years.
Aftab Gul toured England with Pakistan in 1971 and played against Kent at Gravesend that summer. He made only 12 in another drawn game, caught Luckhurst bowled Shepherd, a truly international wicket. Asif Iqbal in the same innings was bowled by Underwood, but not before he had made 50.
Returning to the 1968/69 Test series, all four Kent players played in all three matches. In the first, Cowdrey scored his 22nd and last Test century, and in the second Test, Deadly took a five-for. This second match was described as ‘the only riot-free match of this rubber’ with the crowd controlled by student leaders rather than the police or the army. The third match was particularly galling, and probably frightening, for Alan Knott, who was left on 96 not out, just short of what would have been his first Test century, when rioting forced the abandonment of the match and the tour. Earlier in the innings, Tom Graveney and Colin Milburn had both hit centuries, for each man their last in Tests.
There are more than 20 overseas Test players who have been capped by Kent, some who have performed brilliant things for the county – step forward Asif, John Shepherd, Terry Alderman, Carl Hooper, Aravinda de Silva among others – and one or two whose contribution to Kent’s success has been less obvious. At some stage, somebody will make the definitive list of Test matches featuring capped Kent players on both sides, but until that happens, you’ll have to be content with this brief summary.