Carter still thinking about Lord's

By Paul Bolton, County News Correspondent

It is more than four weeks since the Clydesdale Bank 40 final but Neil Carter, the former Warwickshire all-rounder, admits that he is still replaying the dramatic last ball in his mind.

Carter’s failure to connect with Kabir Ali’s last ball meant that Hampshire won the trophy by virtue of losing fewer wickets with the scores level. While Hampshire’s jubilant players hugged each other, Carter trudged off with only Chris Woakes for company, in an anti-climactic end to his county career.

“People mention that last ball all the time and I must admit that I do think about it as well,” Carter said. “I was on the plane back to Cape Town a week or so after the final and I kept thinking about it and wondering if I could do anything any different.

“I knew it would be in the blockhole but I thought it would be straightish but, from the angle Kabir was bowling, it just tailed away from the stumps.

“A few of the guys said to me afterwards why didn’t I hit it like I did the previous ball which went through the covers for four. It would have been nice if I had connected with that last ball and we had won but it wasn’t to be.

“I can live with it. I suppose people will remember me for that last ball but I also hope that they remember what a great game it was. I don’t think there could be a better way to play your last game than in a Lord’s final.

“For 99 per cent of guys they find out after the end of the season that they have been released and that they have played their last game. But, for me, playing in the final was pretty much the way that I wanted to end my Warwickshire career, even if we lost in a tie.”

Carter, 37, had announced his retirement after 12 years with Warwickshire before the final but he will not be lost to cricket. His county days are over but Carter is about to start an unexpected international career having discovered that he is eligible to play for Scotland.

A change in the qualification regulations means that Carter can now play for the Saltires through his Scotland-born mother and he is targeting the World Cup qualifier against Afghanistan in March for his international debut.

“I’ve sent off all the relevant paperwork, my mother’s birth certificate, my birth certificate and my British passport,” said Carter, who is an England-qualified South African. Carter, however, has  ruled himself out of Scotland’s current training camp in South Africa because he still has a busy programme of events in his benefit year coming up and he is also getting married in Cape Town in December.

Meanwhile, Warwickshire have awarded their County Championship-winning captain Jim Troughton a benefit  next year. Troughton, who led Warwickshire to the seventh championship in their history in only his second season as captain, made his debut for Warwickshire in 2001 having progressed through the youth system at Edgbaston.

Troughton, who hails from a famous family of Stratford-based actors, played six one-day internationals for England in 2003 and admitted that Warwickshire’s Championship success made up for the disappointment of not having a longer England career.

He has scored almost 8,000 runs in 156 first-class matches, including 19 centuries, with a further 3,500 runs in one-day cricket and 1,740 Twenty20 runs. The 33-year-old’s benefit is reward for more than a decade of service to Warwickshire at senior level and Troughton’s profile could not be higher.

Next Wednesday he will take Warwickshire to Buckingham Palace to formally receive the Championship trophy from the Duke of Edinburgh. Warwickshire have been in possession of the trophy for six weeks, since they clinched the title at New Road when they beat Worcestershire in the penultimate round of matches.

Since then they have paraded the trophy at Villa Park football ground and at a civic reception hosted by the Lord Mayor of Birmingham.

Warwickshire have also offered New Zealand off-spinner Jeetan Patel a new two-year contract as their overseas player. Patel was a key figure in Warwickshire’s Championship triumph with 51 wickets even though he missed three matches while he was involved in New Zealand’s Test tour of India.

 

Date: 17/10/2012 17:58:03 by Paul Bolton
In: Warwickshire | Today |