All-rounder Darren Stevens is looking to put his body on the line as Kent start their County Championship season at Leicestershire on Wednesday.

Stevens turns 37 in a fortnight’s time and returns to face his former side at Grace Road this week as Kent finally get the new season underway.

Having bowled a lot for the side last summer, Stevens’ batting suffered in the last couple of months, with his bowling spells winning games under the captaincy of Rob Key.

With James Tredwell now at the helm, Stevens is hoping to maintain the level of form with both bat and ball this summer:

“I looked at it and sat down at the end of last summer and analysed the way it went. I averaged fifty with the bat in the four day game come the start of the Twenty 20’s, but as I bowled so much after, it took it out of me and I had a slight niggle in my left hamstring.”

“Getting into a front foot position, I couldn’t put any pressure on it, so I was just winging it a little bit and my batting suffered as the season went on.”

“We’re hopefully going to monitor my spells of bowling and hopefully I will be back scoring lots of runs.”

Kent’s season ended without promotion or a trophy and Stevens believes that was because they put so much effort in throughout the whole summer, but aims to put it right this year:

“I can’t even remember the last game of the season against Glamorgan at Cardiff as I was done. I put so much into the game against Derbyshire at Canterbury the week before bowling into the wind.”

“We wanted to win that game so badly and it gave us the chance of going up and in the end we wouldn’t have gone up even if we had won that last game.”

“It was disappointing, but we aim to put it right this season.”

With Jimmy Adams having admitted he is looking at rotating the side a little more this year to give some guys a rest, Stevens admitted to KSN he isn’t an advocate of rotation and would rather play every game:

“I don’t think I’ve missed a game in three years, the only games I don’t normally play are the tourist games.”

“I’m one of these blokes that doesn’t want to rest, I want to play, I want us to win a trophy and win each game.”

“At the end of the day I can’t do anything about it, but I would feel like I am letting everyone down if I am fit. If I had a niggle or an injury, fair enough, but I don’t think I will be putting my hand up to say I need a rest.”

“For me, it’s about trying to stay as fit and strong as I can throughout the summer and take each game as it comes.”

With the club looking to rebuild financially, Stevens believes there is a great onus on him and the rest of the players to put on a good show on the pitch to get fans flocking to the games:

“There are lots of plans in the pipeline to help the club go forward and we as a team will do the best we can to help that.”

“We need to help the club get back to where it should be and that’s in the First Division and competing in all formats.”

Much of the talk over pre-season has been as to how cold it has been and in Kent’s three warm up games against Hampshire, Surrey and Cardiff MCCU, players have donned woolly hats to keep the cold out.

With spring finally having sprung, Stevens admitted he was less than pleased to have got the cold weather out of the way:

“I think in the sixteen I’ve been involved in, this has got to have been the coldest. Charlie Shreck was saying on the press day, it was the coldest day he has ever had!”

“We had 45 minute bowling slots and I walked out to bowl with six layers on – I couldn’t get to the crease!

“Jimmy (Adams) said to me that I was just going over on the front line and I said Jimmy, you’re lucky I’m getting to the crease!”

Kent’s opening County Championship fixture against Leicestershire begins at 11am on Wednesday.