With the start of the new domestic cricket season getting ever closer, the Kent coaching staff are pondering over who will replace Sam Billings as skipper for the season’s start after he signed for Delhi Capitals in the Indian Premier League.

Whilst Matt Walker is full of pride for his skipper being selected for the IPL, he also knows that he will be missing his captain for the beginning of the 2021 season – at least!

In the latest of our exclusive mid-winter catch ups with the Spitfires coach, he brought us up to date. “We probably won’t see Sam for a little while,” Walker told us, “I don’t think we’ll see him much during the season all being well!”

“If he plays everything that he’s “meant” to be playing this summer for England, it’ll be a busy summer for him away from Canterbury. I think it’s important for him because there’s the T20 World Cup coming up in India at the end of the year, and I think it’s important for him to be playing in India in the IPL with the level of players he’ll be playing against in those conditions.”

“Hopefully, it will give him some really good experience and practice in Indian conditions to what, hopefully, he’ll come up against in the World Cup.”

“He missed out on the World Cup here two years ago when he was injured – I’m sure he would have been picked in that squad – the rewards to be involved in the IPL are great, but for him it’s about being involved which is directly going to help him to where he wants to be with England come the end of the year.”

“In previous seasons he’s not played a huge amount and the experience being involved in competitions like that is invaluable. But where he’s at now and how he’s played in recent seasons, I’d like to think that he’ll play quite a bit. I’m really pleased for him as we all are – it’s an exciting season ahead for him!”

“We know how good a standard the IPL is – it’s a fantastic competition to be part of! It’s great for Sam and great for the club to have another player playing in the IPL. Obviously, we’ll miss him, but we accept that – it’s part of the game now and it’s part of life now for the counties that you’ll lose players to the IPL or England.”

With Billings away, the coach is facing a question on who will skipper Kent at the very least at the start of the season. “With Sam not being around, we do have to think about the captaincy, and it’s something that we’re talking about at the moment,” Walker told us.

“Joe (Denly) is vice-captain, but Daniel (Bell-Drummond) has done it more recently. Last year he grew into the role – it’s always difficult when you’re vice-captain or you step into someone’s shoes as captain for a few games here and there because you know you’re not in the role for very long – you know that you’re just stepping in and standing in and sometimes is hard to put your own spin on it or really build your own relationship with players as stand-in captain.”

“I think Daniel did it for a quite a big chunk last year and did it well and grew up in that role – he really matured and got to understand the captaincy a bit more.”

“Now that we know that Sam’s not going to be here, we have to talk about who is going to get that role, but we want the person, whoever it is, to want to do – and that’s really important because it’s a big responsibility; it’s quite demanding; and in both Joe and Daniel’s case, they both want to score a lot of runs for the county, and they want to play their best cricket.”

“For either of them, if it affects that, then that’s something that has to be considered too.”

“We’re lucky that we’ve got the two of them who can do it, and also the senior group are moving forward very quickly with natural leaders in the group who would do it in their own way.”

“It will be nice for us to have Joe around for the start of the year, hopefully Zak (Crawley) will be too depending on how much the national side want their players to play, but we know that we will have some wise heads around. So, whoever does do the job, will have a lot of help and I am pretty comfortable whoever leads the troops come the start of the year.”

Keep checking Kent Sports News this week as Matt Walker gives us his exclusive thoughts on the possibility of a second overseas signing and his thoughts on the return of fans this coming season.