Rob Key to stay at Kent

Rob Key will reject Surrey's offer of a bumper pay rise and the captaincy to stay with Kent, FWG understands.

The Kent captain is expected to turn down a £170,000-a-year deal, instead choosing to remain at the helm of the Canterbury club. Key is also thought to have been offered an immediate benefit at The Oval - to make up for the one he would have been foregoing with Kent - but it has not been enough to convince the 30-year-old opening batsman to switch clubs.

Key, who has become one of the most respected captains on the county circuit in recent seasons, has led Kent to the brink of a return to the First Division. In contrast, Surrey are unlikely to be promoted after the latest in a series of mediocre seasons.

The news is sure to please Kent fans, who feared Surrey's financial might would be enough to sway the Beckenham-raised cricketer. Surrey have signed two Worcestershire players - Steven Davies and Gareth Batty - in recent weeks, and more additions are anticipated.

Key may have felt that a move to Surrey would harm his England chances, given their likely Second Division status. That appears to have outweighed the pull of the the greater profile he could have enjoyed leading the self-styled 'Manchester United of cricket'.

Farbrace to take over

Paul Farbrace has announced that he will be quitting his post as Sri Lanka's assistant coach when his contract ends on August 20 to take up the position of head coach of Kent, reports Cricinfo.

Farbrace explained that he was leaving because he got a better offer from Kent. "I was head of the academy and assistant coach of Kent when I joined the Sri Lanka team two years ago," Farbrace told Cricinfo. "But this offer from Kent to become their head coach is too good to miss."

This is potentially excellent new for Kent. Farbrace has a good reputation as a coach and the fact that he's a local boy and a former head of the academy bodes well for the club's homegrown youngsters.

Kent's national service

Ian Bell is a talented batsman but he has rarely been comfortable at Test level. A decent average of just above 40 masks the fact that he has performed so moderately against the Australians (10 Tests, average 25) and that he rarely scores important centuries - except when the opposition is Pakistan, against whom he has four tons. There will have been plenty of England supporters, therefore, who were less than joyous when the decision to recall him for the third Ashes Test match at Edgbaston was made.

How much greater would have been their chagrin if only they had known what Frank Woolley's Ghost can now reveal - that England have not won a home Ashes series without a Kent player since at least the start of the 20th century? In 2005, there was Geraint Jones - you have to then go back to 1985 for the last home England win, which was inspired by 'Lion of Ashford' Richard Ellison. In '81 Graham Dilley played a key role having seen his Kent colleagues Bob Woolmer, Alan Knott and Derek Underwood shine in 1977. Eearlier that decade England had retained the Ashes in 1972 with Knott, Underwood and Brian Luckhurst playing their part.

It was 16 years before that that England had last won the Ashes at home, with Colin Cowdrey and Godfrey Evans in the side. That pair also featured in 1953, while before the war the great man himself - Frank Woolley - and Percy Chapman (pictured above) were in the '26 team. Woolley had also played in 1912 while the 1905 series win saw a solitary performance from Cockney spinning genius Charlie Bylthe.

It is just about conceivable that I've missed an Ashes home victory out that didn't include any Kent players, but let's discount that possibility. It is absolutely essential that the England selectors convene at the earliest possible opportunity and find a way to squeeze Robert Key into the team for Headingley, perhaps after Ravi Bopara fails in Brum. If not Key, then Joe Denly. He might be a wee bit easier to fit in.

Northeast corner

An ability to thrive under pressure is what separates good cricketers from the mediocre. It's what made Michael Vaughan such a fine Test player while Mark Ramprakash - apparently a more gifted batsman - never made a consistent case for himself at the highest level. If you cannot withstand a bit of heat, you will never prosper in cricket, where the mind is as important as the body.

In that respect, Sam Northeast is getting a bit of a headstart on his contemporaries. I cannot recall a Kent youngster ever having had such expectation heaped on his shoulders: perhaps its the current paucity of other homegrown talent or the fact that the club has not produced a truly great cricketer since the 1970s, but the Ashford-born 19-year-old is carrying a county-sized load of hope.

Northeast did not excell against Gloucestershire at Beckenham last week but neither did he disappoint. After a poor first innings, a score of 30 in his second knock was a decent return in a low-scoring match on what appeared to be an unrealiable wicket. Northeast's defence looked solid - attacking shots were few and far between - and the only criticism can be that he maybe allowed his attention to wander after tea. That said, there was no shame to be out LBW to Steve Kirby, Gloucester's transplanted Yorkshireman, who bowled superbly.

Not shameful, but certainly embarassing, was the turn-out at the county championship match (empty ground - see picture above). On Wednesday afternoon there were perhaps 600 in the crowd, a terrible attendance given the size of the local population. Perhaps the game had been badly promoted, but 6000 found their way to Worsley Bridge Road for the preceding Twenty20 game with Surrey. Strange and disappointing, especially as Beckenham is unlikely now to get a Championship match next season.

I was just wondering this morning...

...who's the best at darts out of Joe Denly, Sam Northeast and Warren Lee?

Thankfully, there's an easy way to find out:

Cricket AM 'Ultimate Sportsman'

Revealed: what Denly and Stevens were thinking

It had all looked so easy. With the floodlights having failed, all Kent needed to do was make sure they stayed ahead of the Duckworth-Lewis score to ensure they secured a vital Twenty20 Cup win and dealt a serious blow to a major rival's hopes at the same time. Sussex had not scored very many, hence Kent did not need very many and for much of the innings last night they kept their noses in front whilst losing no wickets. Until the 11th over, when they allowed the scoring rate to drop below what was needed. The Sussex skipper brought on a medium-fast bowler, and the umpires took them off for bad light. Kent lose by two runs.

Many Kent supporter must have wondered at that moment (perhaps aloud, perhaps in stronger terms than might be normal in polite society - you might even have tugged at your hair like the wacky fellow in the picture) what exactly was going on in the minds of Joe Denly and Darren Stevens. Well, wonder no more: I can exclusively reveal* the five reasons for Kent's incredibly blunder.

1). Denly's brain was temporarily borrowed by a passing alien craft, leaving an empty shell of a body to carry Kent to victory. 'I remember going out to bat,' he said, ' but that's all. The next thing I know I'm in a spaceship, there are green beings and nasty looking probes. Then, suddenly, I'm back in the dressing room and Tredders is refusing to speak to me.'

2). Stevens was put off by the smell of frying onions from a nearby hotdog vendor. 'I've smelt some pretty foul food in my time on the county circuit - who can forget the burgers at Derby? - but nothing quite that egregious,' he said. 'It was like silage if it smelt even worse than it actually does, which is quite bad anyway.'

3). Denly missed the reassuring presence of Rob Key at the other end. 'I've got used to him being there for at least the first three or four balls this season,' said the distressed Whitstable native. 'Without Keysy, I'm nothing.'

4). Both Denly and Stevens are incredibly short-sighted and, unable to see the scoreboard, were relying on score updates from the Sussex fielders. 'We're sneaky, don't you worry about that,' cackled Michael Yardy. 'I told them they were ahead of the rate before my last ball. I never believed it would work!' he added, hysterically.

5). The pair wanted to make Kent's progress to a glorious second Twenty20 title in three years even more exciting. 'It looked like we might be basically through if we won this one,' sniffed Stevens. 'That's dull. It would be whack, as we hip-hoppers say. So we decided to lose. Get used to it.'

*not really; incredible as it seems, all these quotes are invented.

Bat Stevens

Kent's victory at Lord's yesterday - by a thumping 62 runs - was largely down to one man: Darren Stevens. His 59 off 26 balls put the game far out of Middlesex's reach and emphasised (if the dismal last few weeks, during which he has been injured, hadn't already done so) just what an important player he is for the team.

Those of us who were at Edgbaston in 2007 would already know that. Kent were wobbling in reply to Gloucestershire's 146 in the Twenty20 Cup final before Stevens' calm head sealed victory, as Robert Key admitted minutes afterwards. "Two overs before (the end) I was back in the dressing room kicking things around," the Kent captain said. "He (Stevens) got us here, and he's had some great innings in the middle order. He saw us home. We'd like to open with him but he's done too well and he's in the middle order for life."

Stevens aside, it was an evening that provided much to worry about. Apparently ticket sales for this year's Twenty20 Cup have been slow (with the notable exception of Kent) and a largely empty Lord's testifed to the limited appeal of a county cricket match on a cool/cold Spring evening. Shaun Udal, captain of Middlesex, was probably not far off when he suggested that overkill could be to blame, in The Independent.

"There's a danger we are going to kill it," he said. "It's typical of English cricket, you get something that's right and it gets overdone. We've got two Twenty20 competitions next year, the County Championship is starting on a ridiculously early date.

"It's daft, it's just being greedy. It's not good for the players – the strain on your body is too much – and it's not good for the spectators, who want to see the best players but won't because they're injured. We need to play less cricket – three competitions, not four: a Twenty20, a 50-over and a four-day competition."

He could have added that the competition has started too early this year and that it has been totally overshadowed by the forthcoming Ashes and World Twenty20. Next year - or even later this year - could see a return of bigger crowds.

The major worry is that this will only increase calls for a big-city-based franchise competition along the lines if the IPL. Those of us who suspect the IPL may not have as bright a future as some think must be alive to the threat to the Twenty20 Cup.