Back for a second spell as Kent captain, Rob Key is looking forward to seeing if he can deliver more silverware.

Key’s highlight of his previous seven year reign as Kent skipper saw the side pick up the Twenty 20 trophy back in 2007 and now back to lead the side after James Tredwell stood down last week, Key will be looking to take the side on to bigger and better things.

With Sam Northeast at his side as vice-captain, Key has been charged with leading the side into a new era with a good crop of youngsters coming through the system and knocking on the first team door.

It’s rare for a cricketer to get a second go at leading a county and Key is back having stepped aside himself last November citing tiredness and time for a new approach, but the 34 year old is relishing the chance to take the side on and is looking forward to these next few weeks where a lot of the planning is done and with the new fixtures coming out next Tuesday:

“I’m really looking forward to it all again. A lot of the good parts come at this time of year. You’ve always got to evolve as a player and as a captain, and I reckon this break has given me the best chance to be successful.”

“This time of year you try and sit back and work out a plan that’s going to take you for the long term and that’s all I’m thinking about at the moment.”

“When you do something for a long time, it becomes the norm and you can take it for granted. If I’d have continued doing the job, it would have been interesting to see where I would have been.”

“This way, I feel really refreshed, I feel like I have different angles to go on, different ways to do it and hopefully I can take the side somewhere different, but also somewhere better and that probably wouldn’t have happened if I hadn’t had that year out.”

“It wasn’t something I’d thought about doing again, but because I’d done the job for so long, coming back to it, I had a good understanding of what was required.”

“It was a decision I was able to make with a lot of information.”

Last November when Key stood down from the captaincy, one of the reasons he gave was that his wife and children hadn’t always seen the best of him, but he feels with their support and that of his friends and family, he is in the right frame of mind to give the Kent job his best shot:

“Fleur and the kids have been a good grounding for me and my wife has always said she wants me to be happy and do what I want to do.”

“I hope that doing it this time around having not done it for a year or so, I can come in like a new captain. I don’t think that many people get this chance to have had a bit of time out and come back and do something fresh.”

“As a leader or a boss, you’re generally in it, day in, day out and you take it for granted and hopefully I won’t get into that position again.”

Just twelve months on from ending his first seven year reign as captain, Key finds that the side has evolved with some of the club’s more experienced pros having left and he told KSN how he will have to deal with some of the club’s youngsters differently:

“I think you have to evolve with the side that you’ve got and when I had the likes of Martin van Jaarsveld and Ryan McLaren, I was able to be a lot more hands off as the side almost took care of itself.”

“Now I need to be a bit more hands on with various people and hands off with others. It’s a slightly different side to the one I left and there will be a few people, maybe even four of five, that haven’t seen me as the captain, so it’s not a bad thing probably!”

One of the hardest parts fans may imagine is going back to having to give out orders to players that have seen Key join the ranks of the “one of the lads” again, but the captain insists nothing has changed in the last few years:

“I never ever changed in that regard, I don’t think and I have heard people say that they have to distance themselves when they become a leader, but I don’t think I ever did that.”

“I think you have got to make sure people respect you, can relate to you and I think I would lose the respect of the guys if I ever tried being something I wasn’t.”

With the season coming around all too soon in the New Year, it’s at this time that clubs like Kent begin to look at potential new signings and filling any vacancies.

Advertisements went out this week for an Assistant Coach and a Cricket Analyst after Phil Relf’s departure back in the summer and for Key it is important that the club get as much of the planning phase sorted sooner rather than later:

“There is a lot to sort and that’s why I feel it is important to try and thrash it out as quickly as you can. With Stevo (Darren Stevens), we’re not going to know about that for some time and for everything else it is a case of getting it sorted between us and then going away and making it happen.”

“The coaches need time to prepare the players to go on and win us games of cricket and at this time of year you’re just trying to get everything into place, have a good winter and get ready for next year and prepare for the success in years to come.”

“It’s an interesting time as there’s lots of things that you can’t necessarily control, but you can change the make up of things.”

“With the coaching structure, it’s about getting the right people in. I think it is all about the personnel and not the structure.”

“You can have a good structure with bad people and you’ll end up struggling, but if you end up with good people in a bad structure, it can still work well.”

With so many players away for the winter, improving their games in foreign countries, Key won’t get much time to spend with some of the club’s younger players until near the start of the season, but that’s not too much of an issue for the returning captain:

“There’s not much you can do about it. It worked well for me going overseas when I was younger and we live in the digital age where you can pretty much get hold of anyone when you need to.”

“Not a lot will be different for me over the winter and I still plan to do my pundit stuff.”

“I’ve got to get fit again and the dog’s fitter than I am at the moment!”

“I actually feel I’m a lot healthier in the winter than I am in the summer, because in the summer you end up being tired and playing cricket, where as in the winter you have a lot more time to get yourself fit and relax which is something I look forward to.”

For Key, one of the biggest issues he faces over the coming months is keeping the right balance of youth and experience in the dressing room, whilst ensuring there is room for characters to come through with the likes of Mike Powell and Charlie Shreck having left the club:

“That’s everything. Not only do you lose their skill and experience, but you also lose some pretty big characters and that has to be replaced.”

“People bring more to a side than just their cricket ability. I will have to advise some of the young guys that it is there time to step up.”

“It’s a short career and you have to go from being a youngster into someone that fills a corner of the dressing room and if you get that blend right, you could be sitting on a very successful side for years to come.”

“We have turned a corner financially and hopefully we can strengthen the squad some more and then who knows, maybe in the next few years we can emulate the success we have had before and pick up some silverware.”