Kentish Gazette Canterbury & District
Village side helping me return to action
Mark: My words By Mark Davies
I’m gutted to have missed the first two games of the Kent season through injury but hopefully I’ll be back in time for our next game on May 4. Unfortunately I have a rupture on a tendon in my right bicep – I had the same injury last year in my left arm and the doctor told me at the time that if one goes, the other tends to go too. I have had some injections but it’s taken a bit longer to settle down this time and with it being my right arm it’s a bit more important. I’m up in the north east at the moment and I played some league cricket as a batsman at the weekend, turning out for North Yorkshire & South Durham Premier League side Sedgefield – a village near where I grew up. It’s funny playing league cricket because everyone wants to get you out or smack you around the park. You want to get a good run-out and you want people competing, you just don’t want to be embarrassed, especially when your mum and grandma are stood on the sideline watching. I managed to score four with one lusty blow before getting out. I’ve increased my bowling this week and hopefully this weekend will bowl in our game against Marske before reporting back to Kent on Monday. Hopefully I’ll be able to join in full training and stake my claim for a role in the team. The other guys have a head start on me and so it’s up to me to prove my fitness and impress in training or for the 2nds to try and get in the team.
Former Kent coach Paul Farbrace was named as assistant to new England coach Peter Moores this week. In the times I’ve met him since joining Kent and before when I used to come down with Durham, he always seemed a great guy. He’s done very well at Yorkshire since he left Kent and been bringing decent cricketers through all the time. To get the shout for England is fantastic for him and I’m sure he’d do a great job alongside Peter Moores. When everyone was banging on about Ashley Giles for the England job I thought it was a schoolboy error to overlook Moores, he did a decent job first time around and has done an incredible job for Lancashire since then. He’s the only man for the job.
On Monday afternoon a ball was thrown back to the middle and hit Darren Stevens on the knee. He went straight down with a bloodcurdling cry and people immediately feared the worst, that he had a serious injury, but even though he limped off, thankfully he was OK. It was just a bump. That’s just Stevo for you, he’s just the same in our games of football in the warm-up. I think he’s been watching too much Premier League football.